M P 



AND 



Paths 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Shelf r )H4 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



— /iH 

2 AF A Ml 



2 



LAMPS AND PATHS. 



Lamps and. Paths. 



BY 



/ 



THEODORE T. MUNGER, 

AUTHOR OF " ON THE THRESHOLD." 



DEC 82 J 883 



BOSTON: 
N. J. BARTLETT AND COMPANY, 



CORNHILL. 



1884. 









%fi 



i 



The Link 
of Congress 



WASHINGTON 

1 

Copyright, 1883, 
By Theodore T. Munger. 



Smfcttsitg Prtss: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



<i\)t$z Sermons;, 

Preached to the Children of my Congregation in North Adams, 

AT THEIR 

Annual Festival of Flowers in June, 

Are again given to them in this printed form, with the hope, not only 
that pleasant memories may thus be kept alive, but that some of the 
words then spoken may be repeated in their influence for good. 

T. T. MUXGER. 



1878. 

THE DESERT. 



Oh, holy Sabbath bells ! 

Ye have a pleasant voice ! 

Through all the land your music swells, 

And man with one commandment tells 

To rest and to rejoice. 

As thirsty travellers sing, 
Through desert paths that pass, 
To hear the welcome waters spring, 
And see, beyond the spray they fling, 
Tall trees and waving grass, — 

So we rejoice to know 

Your melody begun ; 

For when our paths are parched below, 

Ye tell us where green pastures glow 

And living waters run. 

George MacDonald. 



I. 

THE DESERT. 

" Lead me to the Rock that is higher than /." 
Psalm lxi. 2. 




HE first thing to do in a sermon 
is to explain the text, if it needs 
explanation, — as most texts do. 

If you were to think of these 
words for a moment, I presume 
you would find yourself wondering why David, 
who wrote the Psalm, wanted to be led to a 
rock; and then why he wanted a rock higher 
than himself. 

If he had lived here in Berkshire he would 
not need to have gone far ; and he might easily 
have found many higher than his head. But it 
is not so everywhere. In central New York — 
where I spent my childhood — there are no 
rocks worthy of the name, and it was not till I 
was a large lad that I saw one half as high as 
my head. I remember one about as high as a 



14 THE DESERT. 



table, upon which the little lambs used to jump 
in play ; and it was the largest in all the country 
about. But then we felt no need of rocks, as 
David seemed to have felt. Indeed, we were 
rather better off without them ; and all the 
farmers about here will tell you that they wish 
they had fewer instead of so many. But for 
some reason, David prayed to be led to a great 
rock. 

Now, to understand this we must take a long 
journey, a quarter of the way eastward around 
the earth, — to Syria and the great desert re- 
gions southward in Arabia, and farther east 
beyond the Jordan. Although David lived at 
Jerusalem when he wrote the Psalm, he had 
made long journeys and lived many months 
near these desert regions. When he was a 
young man, at one time he lived in a cave 
called Adullam, in a place w T here there were no 
houses nor trees. And afterward, when he was 
a king, he marched through deserts with his 
armies. And when he was a boy, and tended 
sheep, I presume he often had to lead the flock 
across desert places to find good pasturage. 
Now, there is no place where men travel that 



THE DESERT. I 5 



is so hard and painful as a desert, — it is worse 
than arctic ice or tropical forests. In arctic 
regions exercise keeps one warm, and in the 
tropics the trees afford shade, and there are 
many beautiful and interesting things to en- 
gage the attention. But in the desert there is 
almost everything to make travelling uncom- 
fortable, and nothing to make it pleasant. 
Deserts are very warm places. The sun shines 
fiercely, and the sand becomes hot. There is 
no cool, green grass ; there are no trees for 
shade, — only a great wide stretch of sandy 
waste. Sometimes the ground is rough and 
flinty, but oftener it is jugt a level stretch of 
sand. Think how desolate and tiresome it 
must be, — no trees, no grass nor flowers, nor 
ferns nor mosses; no rivers nor brooks; no 
hills, no houses, no roads even, but just the 
level sand below and the blue sky above, filled 
with dazzling and burning light ! Not a very 
nice place to be in, you see. Yet a great many 
people live near these deserts, and are forced to 
cross them, — sometimes making journeys weeks 
long. And, strange to say, these people get to 
love the deserts. Indeed, people generally love 



1 6 THE DESERT. 



the place where they were born, and where 
they live. The Icelanders say that " Iceland is 
the best land the sun shines on," though the 
sun scarcely shines enough to melt the ice in 
summer. And so the Arabs who live about the 
deserts get to love them, and doubtless think 
that a sandy desert is finer than a grassy field. 
And there is something about desert-life that 
tends to make them very thoughtful and wise. 
A great many of the wisest sayings ever ut- 
tered have come from these desert-dwelling 
Arabs. I presume it may be because in their 
long journeys and in their quiet lives they 
have a great deal of time for thinking. They 
have a very firm belief in the one God, and are 
very particular to pray to Him several times a 
day. Their religion requires them always to 
wash their hands before praying. Often in the 
desert they can get no water, and so they wash 
their hands in the clean sand ; which shows 
how particular they are about their worship. 

I read this story the other day, showing how 
an Arab proved the existence of God : — 

" A Frenchman who had won a high rank among 
men of science, yet who denied the God who is the 



THE DESERT. I 7 



author of all science, was crossing the Great Sahara 
in company with an Arab guide. He noticed, with a 
sneer, that at times his guide, whatever obstacles might 
arise, put them all aside, and kneeling on the burning 
sands called on his God. Day after day passed, and 
still the Arab never failed ; till at last one evening 
the philosopher, when he rose from his knees, asked 
him, with a contemptuous smile, ' How do you know 
there is a God?' The guide fixed his beaming eyes 
on the scoffer for a moment in wonder, and then said 
solemnly : ' How do I know there is a God ? How 
do I know that a man, and not a camel, passed my 
hut last night in the darkness ? Was it not by the 
print of his feet in the sand ? Even so,' — and he 
pointed to the sun, whose last rays were flashing 
over the lonely desert, — ' that foot-print is not that of 
a man/ " 

I think this was very beautiful, and also very 
good proof of the existence of God. I wish all 
of you, when you see the sun sinking behind 
the Taconics, into a bed of red and golden 
clouds, would stop and think that God is the 
source of all that beauty and glory. 

A great many of these Arabs also, in all 
ages, have been very just and good men. We 
have many stories, in prose and verse, to illus- 



1 8 THE DESERT. 



tratethis; but I think nona are finer than the 
little poem by Leigh Hunt, entitled "Abou 
Ben Adhem," which I wish you all knew by 
heart : — 

" Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase !) 

Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, 

And saw within the moonlight in his room, 

Making it rich and like a lily in bloom, 

An angel writing in a book of gold ; 

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold, 

And to the Presence in the room he said : 

'What writest thou ? ' The Vision raised its head, 

And, with a look made of all sweet accord, 

Answered : ' The names of those who love the Lord.' 

i And is mine one ? ' said Abou. * Nay, not so/ 

Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low, 

But cheerly still, and said : ' I pray thee, then, 

Write me as one who loves his fellow-men. ' 

The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night 

It came again, and with a great waking light, 

And showed the names whom love of God had 

blessed, — 
And, lo ! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest ! " 

They have also uttered a great many very 
wise and useful truths under the form of fables 
and parables. There is one that shows how an 



THE DESERT. I 9 



evil habit — like drinking, or any kind of vice — 
grows and gains on one till at last it destroys 
him. When the Arab is travelling across the 
desert, he pitches a little tent for himself to 
keep out the cold, — for often the nights are 
chilly, — and ties his camel just outside. This 
is the fable : — 

" One cold night a camel, thus fastened by a long 
tether, thrust his nose into his master's tent, and said : 
'It is very cold, — let me put my nose within the 
tent;' and the indulgent master consented. Then 
the camel said: 'It grows colder, — let me thrust in 
my whole head.' Growing presumptuous, he at 
length pushed in the whole length of his crooked 
neck, and finally the entire bulk of his uncouth and 
ill-savored body. And when the master, remonstrat- 
ing, said, * There is not enough room for me and 
thee,' the camel replied : ' It is verily so ; you may go 
out of the tent, — I shall remain.' " 

This fable is for us all, young and old. It 
shows how if we indulge in any evil habit, it 
grows and grows, and consumes more of our 
time and takes up our thoughts, and crowds 
out everything good and noble, till there is 
nothing left but the evil habit. This is especi- 



20 THE DESERT. 



ally so in the habit of drinking. The boy or 
young man says, " Just a glass of beer now and 
then," — and soon it is wine, and then it is whis- 
key ; and before long he feels he must have it 
every day, till the terrible habit takes full pos- 
session of him, as the camel filled the tent. 
The moral is — Do not begin ! If the Arab had 
not let the camel thrust in his nose, it would 
not have turned him out of his tent. Do not 
begin to swear, to tell lies, to cheat, to drink. 
A bad beginning makes a bad ending ; and all 
bad endings begin in something small and 
slight : hence we need to be very careful. 

But I must get back to the text. We have 
not yet found out why David prayed to be led 
to a rock higher than himself. I will tell you 
at once, and explain it afterward. It was be- 
cause he wanted shelter. It was shelter that 
David prayed for; shelter from one of two 
things, — heat or storm. 

In order to understand this, we must imagine 
ourselves making a journey across a desert, — 
not a level, sandy desert, but a rough, stony, 
barren waste like that south of Beersheba to- 



THE DESERT. 2 1 



wards Arabia. Imagine we have left this place 
in the morning, and are going to visit Mt. 
Sinai. The air is fresh and cool ; we leave the 
vineyards and olive orchards, and enter the 
rough, wild waste. Soon not a tree is to be 
seen, nor any green thing. The sun mounts 
higher in the sky, and his rays beat fiercely 
upon us. We keep on bravely for a few hours, 
but towards noon the sun is so hot, and the 
way is so dry and rough, and we become so 
weary and oppressed with heat, that we are 
ready to faint. The sun's rays are everywhere ; 
they prick us like hot needles, and everything 
we touch burns and blisters the skin. It is in 
vain to look for the shade of a tree, or a grassy 
ravine with springs of cool water. There are 
no villages nor houses where we can stop till 
the sun begins to go down ; there is only the 
clear, burning sky above us and the dry, burn- 
ing earth around us. Our only hope is to find 
some great rock so high as to cast a shadow 7 , 
or with an overhanging arch under which we 
can hide ourselves till towards nightfall, when 
we can start again. 

Now suppose you were lost in such a desert 



THE DESERT. 



and under such a sky. You have wandered till 
you are weary and ready to perish ; it is in 
vain to pray for what is not there; so you pray 
that God would lead you to some high rock 
where you can rest and find shelter, and per- 
haps meet other travellers who will show you 
the way. Often at the foot of such rocks in 
the desert there are springs of cool water, and 
a little grass that the camels can eat; so you 
would find both shade from the sun and the 
refreshment of water. 

But there are worse things in the desert than 
clear, hot sunshine. There are storms ; and 
desert-storms are the worst that blow. It is 
terrible to be out upon the ocean in a tempest, 
or off upon the mountains when winter-storms 
are raging; but neither at sea nor in the moun- 
tains are storms so fearful as in the desert. At 
sea the danger is from water ; in the desert it is 
from sand and dust and heat. In the moun- 
tains the danger is from cold and snow. These 
storms are called simoons. There is simply a 
fierce wind ; but as it sweeps along it gathers 
up the dust and sand in such quantity that the 
sky is filled with it, — a great yellow, whirling, 



THE DESERT. 23 



driving cloud. When the traveller sees it com- 
ing out of the red sky he is terribly frightened, 
for if it blows any great length of time it will 
smother him to death. The camels fear it as 
much as their riders. They lie down and bury 
their noses in the sand, and wait till the fierce 
wind has passed by ; and the men dig holes in 
the earth, if they have time, where they can 
protect themselves. The danger comes from 
two sources, — dust and heat. The dust — 
finer than any we ever saw — fills the nostrils 
and lungs, causing hemorrhage, or bleeding 
and suffocation. And then the heat is so 
intense that men and animals wilt and faint, 
and at last die. I would rather be caught out 
upon Greylock in the wildest storm that ever 
beat against it, than to be overtaken by a 
simoon in the desert. 

When the traveller sees the simoon coming, 
he immediately looks about for shelter. His 
tent could not stand before the wind. If he 
digs a hole in the earth, it may be filled with 
driving sand ; for the sand drifts just as the 
snow does here. What he wants most is a 
great high rock, — higher than himself. If he 



24 THE DESERT. 



can get behind such a rock he is safe. It will 
keep off the driving dust; and perhaps there 
may be a cleft into which he can creep, and 
so hide himself. And this is what the hymn 
means, — 

" Rock of Ages, cleft for me : 
Let me hide myself in thee ! " 

Now I think you all know what David meant 
when he prayed to be led to a rock higher 
than himself; he wanted shelter against the 
burning heat of the sun and against storms. 

But he meant a little more than this, or 
rather something like this. David is not think- 
ing about an actual rock, and real heat and 
storm, but about religious things that are like 
them. 

We are all of us making a journey through 
life, and .it is somewhat like a journey through 
a desert. We meet certain dangers and trou- 
bles against which we need protection. And 
these dangers and troubles are very well repre- 
sented by heat and storm. The dazzling and 
wilting heat of the sun may stand for tempta- 
tion, and the storms may stand for troubles like 
sickness and death and great disappointment. 



THE DESERT. 25 



I suppose all of you know the power of 
temptation to do wrong, because you have 
felt it, — temptations to deceive your parents 
in order to please yourselves ; to go skating or 
hunting birds'-nests, or some such thing con- 
trary to their orders ; secretly to disobey their 
wishes ; to render false excuses to your teach- 
ers ; to read bad books ; to revenge yourselves, 
or " pay-off " those who have injured you ; to 
pride yourself upon your better dress; to jeer 
at the peculiarities or clothes or conduct of 
others ; to use bad language, — words that 
would make you blush if you knew a lady 
heard you. 

Now these temptations are very like a hot 
sun in the desert ; they so dazzle you that they 
seem for the time to be all right. And then 
all your better feelings and thoughts wilt and 
languish; and soon conscience begins to burn 
and prick you, and you begin to find out that 
it is a terrible thing to yield to temptation. 
Now at such times you need God more than 
you need any one else. You need Him to 
hear your repentance, for you have sinned 
against Him, and you want Him to forgive 



26 THE DESERT. 



you ; and you need Him to keep you from all 
these temptations, and to shelter you against 
their fierce and blinding beams. At such 
times God is your rock, — a high rock, — 
under the shadow of which you can think 
and pray, and get strength for the temptations 
of to-morrow. 

In Walter Scott's " Ivanhoe," which I presume 
many of you have read, you will find in the 
thirty-ninth chapter a beautiful hymn sung by 
Rebecca the Jewess when she was exposed to 
great temptation, in which are these two lines 
that we all ought to know by heart : — 

"Be thoughts of Thee a cloudy screen 
To temper the deceitful ray ! " 

And then there are the storms. I am glad 
that you do not yet know much about the storms 
of life, and I shall not say very much to you 
about them. But perhaps some of you have 
already had heavy sorrows ; perhaps you have 
sometime lost a little sister or brother, so that 
your heart was almost broken. And some of 
you may have lost a mother or father; or you 
may have to work very hard ; or you may have 



THE DESERT. 27 



sharp pain to bear. Well, these are storms ; 
and when they come, all you can do is to fly to 
God, — just as if you were overtaken by a 
storm in the desert you would fly to some 
great rock near you. God will take you in 
His arms and comfort you, and hold you safe 
all your life through. 



1879. 
LAMPS AND PATHS. 



Straight is the path? Ah, then, we may not roam ! 
No ; for it leads us straight into a star-wide home. 

George MacDonald. 



II. 

LAMPS AND PATHS. 

" Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path ." 
Psalm cxix. 105. 




F we were not so used to reading 
the Bible without thought or ques- 
tion, this verse would strike us 
very strangely. Commonly a light 
is for the eyes rather than for the 
feet, and a lamp is to read or sew by rather 
than to walk by. 

But it was not always so. When David put 
these words into one of his Psalms, people read 
very little and walked a great deal, because 
they had few books to read and no carriages to 
ride in ; there was more walking than reading. 
More than that, the roads were such that, if 
one had occasion to go anywhere in the night, 
it was necessary to take a lamp, both in order 
to find the road and to avoid the dangers of 
getting out of it. In all that land of Judaea, 



32 LAMPS AND PATHS. 

where David lived, there .was nothing that we 
would call a road, — that is, a good broad high- 
way, with sidewalks and fences. There was not 
anything like a good " country road," nor even 
like our paths through the forests where wood 
and lumber are drawn out. Instead, there 
were simply foot-paths or mule-paths leading 
from one village to another. They were easy 
enough to find in the daytime, but they were 
very rough ; they were not " worked " at all. 
If they led to a hill or a precipice, the traveller 
clambered up or down, or went around, as best 
he could. There were no fences enclosing 
them, no bridges over the streams ; and even 
in the towns and cities there were no lamps 
burning gas or kerosene. In the matter of 
travelling one had to pick his way over the 
country pretty much for himself. Sometimes 
he did not even try to keep in the path, but 
travelled straight on across fields, up hill and 
down dale, just as he liked. It is almost 
exactly the same in that country now. There 
is but one road that we would call such in 
the whole country. It leads from Berut to 
Damascus, under Mt. Lebanon. If you were 



LAMPS AND PATHS. 33 

to make that journey, you would ride in a 
stagecoach; but if you were travelling any- 
where else in Syria, you would either go on 
foot or on horseback. A great number of 
tourists from England and America go every 
year from Jaffa to Jerusalem ; but all must go on 
horses, and along a path that wanders here and 
there, over the hills and through the valleys, 
very much like the paths made by sheep and 
cows on our hillside pastures. As the jour- 
ney is rather too long for one day, they are 
forced to spend the night on the way; and they 
are very careful to start in time to reach the 
stopping-place before dark, for if night should 
overtake them, it would be difficult even for 
the guides to find the path, and they would 
also be in danger of falls and bruises amongst 
the rocks and steep places on every side. But 
if by chance a party of travellers going from 
Jaffa to Jerusalem were to be overtaken by 
night on the way, there would be nothing for 
them to do but to light a lantern, and, holding 
it close to the ground, try to keep the path by 
finding the hoof-prints of the horses that have 
gone before them. They would hold the lamp 

3 



34 LAMPS AND PATHS. 

down low, about their feet, rather than up high 
about the heads ; and so David, in this Psalm 
of his, speaks of "a lamp unto my feet, and a 
light unto my path." 

If they had had such lanterns as we have 
now, that shed a powerful light all around, 
they might have held them up; but their lamps 
were very simple,- — just a little earthen lamp 
with two holes — - one in which to pour the oil, 
made from olives, and the other for the wick, 
which was of flax. 

Such a lamp would not shed much light, — 
not enough to see far ahead, but only a few 
feet, when held close to the ground. I have 
heard it said that sometimes they fastened the 
lamps to their feet ; but I can hardly believe 
this. When we see Dr. Jessup, of Berut, we 
will ask him if it is true. 

Now I think we all understand the text, or, 
rather, what is meant by a lamp for the feet. 
David says that God's Word is like this lamp. 
It shines all about our path, and shows us 
which way to go. 

This text implies several things. By imply 
I mean this : if you ask for food, it implies that 



LAMPS AND PATHS. 35 

you are hungry; if you ask the way to such 
a store or house, it implies that you do not 
know the way ; if you call out for a light, it 
implies that it is dark about you and that you 
cannot see. If we did not sometimes use hard 
words and explain them, you would never find 
out what they mean. 

So this text implies three things that I shall 
now speak to you about. 

1. It implies, or means, that it is a dark 
world. It is a very good world ; but there are 
some things about the world and about life 
that are very dark. There are some important 
truths that we ourselves cannot be sure of. 
There are many things that we know perfectly. 
We know that there is a solid earth under our 
feet ; we know that we see one another, and 
that the mountains rise about us, and that the 
sun shines, and that the rain falls; we know 
that twice two are four. But we are not so 
sure about some other things. We do not of 
ourselves really know there is a God. We 
might guess it, and feel pretty sure of it, as 
the heathen do ; but we might get no nearer 



36 LAMPS AND PATHS. 

right than they. And if we did not know 
there is a God, we could not know how the 
world came to exist. It is a great puzzle 
now, — how all this beautiful framework of na- 
ture came to be ; but if we had been left to 
our own guesses, we could have been sure of 
nothing about it. And in the same way we 
could not have known anything about our- 
selves, — how we came to exist. And so, if we 
had to trust to ourselves, there would be a 
great cloud of uncertainty shutting us in, like 
the clouds that settle on Greylock in Novem- 
ber days ; we know Greylock is there, but we 
can hardly persuade strangers that there is a 
great mountain. within the mist. But when we 
open the Bible, we find that there is one God, 
who made the heavens and the earth and the 
animals and man. This simple fact throws out 
light, like a great lantern or sun, and makes 
a great many things plain. God made the 
world ; God made us ; God made all things. 
But it is a dark world in another respect. 
Of ourselves we could never surely know that 
there is another life after this. We might hope 
there is, but we could not be sure. We might 



LAMPS AND PATHS. 



make all sorts of guesses, as the old Greeks did 
about Pluto's realms ; but they would be only 
guesses. But in the Bible Christ tells us that 
God's universe is full of mansions or homes, 
and that He went away from the earth to pre- 
pare them for us. We need not be greatly 
troubled about death when we remember that 
so dear a friend as Christ is to prepare our 
place for us when we die. If we love and 
obey Christ, the place will be with Him where 
He is, and all ready to receive us. 

Now, nearly everybody speaks of death as 
dark, and the grave as cold and dark, and of 
the tomb as silent and dark. But when we 
read about death in the Bible, it is not dark. 
The light may not be very great ; but if we 
hold it carefully in the way that leads out of life 
into death, we shall see the prints of Christ's 
feet, and we can safely follow where He has 
gone before us. There is a poem by Henry 
Vaughan beginning, — 

" They are all gone into a world of light," — 

which you will read when you are older, and, 
I am sure, think very beautiful. He believed 



38 LAMPS AND PATHS. 

what we have been saying of death so fully 
that instead of calling it dark he made it a 
light, — 

" Dear, beauteous death, — the jewel of the just, — 
Shining nowhere but in the dark ! " 



*& 



2. The text implies, or means, that going 
through life is like walking a path in a dark 
night, and that the Bible shows us the path. 

Almost all roads have names. There is 
Broadway in New York, and the Strand in 
London, and the Champs-Elysees in Paris, and 
the Corso in Rome; and here at home we have 
Main Street and Church Street and Hblden 
Street, and so on. Now, if w r e were to name the 
path of life that the Bible points out, we might 
call it " The Way of God's Commandments, " — 
rather a long name ; but then it means a great 
thing. For all these streets that I spoke of are 
named from some peculiarity. Broadway is a 
wide street, — wide for New York at least ; the 
Strand runs along near the river Thames ; the 
Champs-Elysees is like a delightful pleasure- 
ground; and the Corso is where the horses 
run races without riders or drivers, urged on 



LAMPS AND PATHS. 39 

by dangling spurs. So we call the path of 
life " The Way of God's Commandments," be- 
cause it is all marked out by God's guiding 
words. 

This road is a very long one for most of us. 
It runs through ten, twenty, forty, sixty, and 
sometimes eighty years. It is winding, up and 
down, sometimes rough and sometimes swampy; 
and it is always blind and hard to keep except 
as we use the light of the Bible, where we shall 
find all the directions we need. 

The moment one steps out of this path one 
is in danger; that is the strange thing about 
the path of life. Just so soon as we cease to 
hold God's WorcJ over it and to remember 
God's guiding commandments, we get out of 
the road, and then we are in peril ; for it leads 
through a region full of three things, — preci- 
pices and marshes and dark forests. Some- 
times, when one gets out of this path, he falls 
over the rocks and lies bruised and bleed- 
ing. This happens when we forget the com- 
mandments of virtue, such as temperance and 
honesty and truth-telling and obedience to 
parents. I see young people worse off than 



4-0 LAMPS AND PATHS. 

if they had fallen over rocks. A boy who 
drinks, a girl who tells lies, children who dis- 
obey their parents, will never make this jour- 
ney of life in safety unless they make haste 
to get back into the safe path of God's com- 
mandments, that leads one away from all such 
things. 

I think, however, there are almost more 
swamps alongside of the journey of life than 
precipices, and they are almost as bad to en- 
counter. By swamps I mean the shameful 
sins, such as meanness, pride in dress or be- 
cause ones father is rich, despising others 
because they are poor or poorly clad, bearing 
down hard upon those who are unpopular, or 
have some unfortunate impediment of speech, 
such as stammering, or peculiarity of appear- 
ance that the poor fellow cannot help ; fancied 
superiority if one happens to be a little quicker 
or brighter ; contemptuous or ungenerous treat- 
ment of others. I would almost rather see a 
boy or girl stealing than guilty of meanness. 
You can cure the former; but it is hard work 
to get meanness out of anybody. 

I call these faults swamps ; and how often 



LAMPS AND PATHS. 4 1 

young people, and old too, fall into them and 
get all covered with mire, and yet go along the 
•streets without knowing it, and as pleased with 
themselves as if they were clothed in purple 
and fine linen. The worst thing about this 
straying out of the path of life is that one does 
not know one is lost, nor how soiled one gets to 
be. But if one falls over a precipice, — that is, 
if one gets drunk or steals, — one knows it, and 
feels the disgrace ; and it is a good thing to 
feel ashamed when one has done wrong. 

The lamp of God's Word sheds a very clear 
light along these swampy places; and I will 
show it to you. It is found in St. Paul's letter 
to the Ephesians, iv. 32 : " Be ye kind one to 
another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, 
even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven 
you." 

And then there are dark forests by the side 
of the path of life, and a great many wander 
away into them. I mean by dark forests, for- 
getting that there is a path that God has com- 
manded us to walk in; forgetting all about 
duty; forgetting almost that there is such a 
word as duty ; forgetting all about prayer and 



42 LAMPS AND PATHS. 

God and Jesus Christ and his teachings; for- 
getting what conscience says, and all the good 
teaching of home and the church, and going 
on in a heedless way, doing just what you 
like, and saying to yourself and others that 
you " mean to have a good time," — but don't 
you know that if one sets out to have a good 
time one never gets it? — this I call getting 
out of God's path into dark forests. Heed- 
lessness, thoughtlessness, indifference, careless- 
ness, — these are sad things for young or old. 
I would not have you anxious and doubtful 
and miserable all the while lest you lose the 
way ; but I do believe that it is good for us all 
to keep our eyes and ears open in this world, 
and our minds and hearts also, and to think a 
great deal about the way we are going. 

I fear there are some of us lost in just such 
forests as these. How shall we get back ? 
When people are lost in the woods, there is 
but one way for others to find them, and that 
is by shouting. If one is lost on a desert or 
prairie, the eye would be used, because one can 
see farther than the voice can reach; but in 
a forest one cannot see far, and so must use 



LAMPS AND PATHS. 43 

the voice. Well, if any of us are lost in these 
wild woods of forgetfulness and indifference, 
and want to get back to the path of God's 
commandments, all we have to do is to stop, 
and stay still for a little while, and keep our 
ears open, and hold ourselves all ready to start, 
and very soon we shall hear a voice calling to 
us : " This is the way ; walk ye in it." And 
then, going toward the voice, we shall find not 
only the path, but a Leader who will show us 
every step of the way hereafter. 

3. I will speak of only one other thing that 
the text implies; and that is — a destination, 
or end. 

Every path leads somewhere, except some of 
these paths upon the mountains about us ; do 
not trust them when you go chestnuting next 
October. That is what paths are for, — to take 
us somewhere. In Rome, two thousand years 
ago, there were guideboards on the main ave- 
nues leading out of the city, pointing to Ger- 
many, to Egypt, to Spain, to Gaul, — rather 
far-off places these roads led to, but they 
showed how great Rome was. 



44 LAMPS AND PATHS. 

Life is not only a path, or a "journey," as 
everybody calls it, but it leads to a destination. 
Now, what puzzles me is, that anybody, old or 
young, should forget this, — that the path of 
life leads to something. I do not mean merely 
to something in the future life, but to some- 
thing here in this life. It is as sure as fate ; 
yet I see a great many persons who do not 
seem to have ever heard that life leads to 
something. I see young men and boys drink- 
ing and swearing, and reading bad books and 
vile papers, and I wonder if they know where 
such paths lead to. When older persons do 
such things, we call them fools. When we see 
a grown-up man staggering along the street, 
with his mouth full of oaths, we say, " O you 
foolish man, you know not where your path 
leads ! " If he would take God's Word, and 
hold it down as a lamp about his feet, he 
would find them very near a steep precipice, 
at the foot of which are strewn dead mens 
bones. 

I think one is never too young to look and 
see which way his path leads. But a better 
thing still is to say, " I will take God's Word, — 



LAMPS AND PATHS. 45 

his commandments and all the tender words of 
our Saviour, — and use them as a light to show 
me the path of my life. 

I said, at the outset, that the text implies 
that this is a dark world. Yes ; but as we walk 
along this path year after year, we shall find it 
growing plainer and lighter and brighter every 
day; and as we draw near to the end of the 
journey, we can look ahead, and find that all 
the darkness is behind us, and that beyond 
all is clear and bright ! 



i88o. 
THE STORY OF A CUP OF WATER. 



Restore to God his due in tithe and time : 
A tithe purloined cankers the whole estate. 

Sundays observe : think, when the bells do chime, 
'T is angels' music ; therefore come not late. 

God there deals blessings. If a king did so, 

Who would not haste, nay give, to see the show? 

George Herbert. 



III. 



THE STORY OF A CUP OF WATER. 

" And David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me 
drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem, that is at the gate ! 
And the three brake through the host of the Philistines, and 
drew water out of the well of Bethlehem, that was by the gate, 
a7id took it, and brought it to David : but David would not 
drink of it, but poured it out to the Lord, and said, My God 
forbid it me, that I should do this thing : shall I drink the blood 
of these men that have put their lives in jeopardy ? for with the 
jeopardy of their lives they brought it. Therefore he would not 
drink it." / 

i Chronicles xi. 17-19. 




F any of my young friends ask 
why I have read this long-time- 
ago Bible-story as a text for a ser- 
mon to-day, I will not only answer, 
but thank them for the question ; 
for nothing helps a speaker at the start so 
much as a straight, intelligent question. I 
have read this story from the Chronicles, be- 
cause I want to connect this beautiful occa- 
sion with some beautiful thing in the Bible ; 
for beautiful things go together. 



5<3 THE STORY OF A CUP OF WATER. 

My main object and desire in this service is 
to have everything beautiful and pure and high. 
For I know how well you will remember this 
day in after years ; I know how every feature 
and incident is imprinting itself upon your 
minds ; I know how, twenty and forty years 
hence, when we older ones will be dead and 
gone, and you will be scattered far and wide, 
some in the great cities, — New York, Chi- 
cago, St. Louis, — some in California, and 
some farther off still, — I know how, on quiet 
June Sundays years hence, you will recall this 
Festival of Flowers in North Adams. You 
may be in some of the great cities, or on the 
broad prairies, or amongst the park-like forests 
of the Sierra, or in Puget Sound, but you will 
never forget this day. These familiar walls; 
this pulpit and font and chancel decked with 
flowers; this service, made for you and in part 
by you, — you will never forget it. And be- 
cause you will always remember it, I want to 
have it throughout just as beautiful, just as 
pure and inspiring, as possible. The flowers 
•will do their part; they never fail to speak 
sweet, pure words to us. Your Superintendent 



THE STORY OF A CUP OF WATER. 5 1 

always does his part well, and I hope you will 
all thank him in your hearts, if not with words, 
for his faithful and laborious interest in you. 
And your teachers and others who have 
brought together this wealth of beauty, this 
glory of color and perfume, this tribute of 
sweetness from mountain-side and field and 
garden, — they have clone well; and you will 
remember it all years hence, and when far 
away, and perhaps some tears will start for 
11 the days that are no more." 

But this occasion would not be complete to 
my mind if there were not linked with it some 
noble and inspiring truth. . I want to make all 
these flowers and this music the setting of a 
truth, like a diamond set round with emeralds, 
or an opal with pearls. You have brought the 
pearls and the emeralds ; / must bring a dia- 
mond or an opal to set in the midst of them. I 
am very sure that I have one in this old story, — 
a diamond very brilliant if we brush away the 
old Hebrew dust, and cut away the sides and 
let in a little more light upon it. I am not 
sure, however, but I ought to call it a pearl 
rather than a diamond ; for there is a chaste 



52 THE STORY OF A CUP OF WATER, 

and gentle modesty about* it that reminds one 
of the soft lustre of a pearl rather than of 
the flashing splendor of a diamond. St. John, 
in naming the precious stones that make the 
foundation of the heavenly city, omits the dia- 
mond, — and for some good reason, I suspect, 
— while the twelve gates were all pearls. Now, 
I think David stood very near one of those 
gates of pearl at the time of this story. To 
my mind, it is nearly the most beautiful in all 
this Book ; and I know you will listen while I 
tell it more fully. 

I have this impression of David, — that if you 
had seen him when he was young, you would 
have thought him the most glorious human 
being you had ever looked on. He was one of 
those persons who fascinate all who come near 
them. He bound everybody to him in a won- 
derful way. They not only liked him, but they 
became absorbed in him, and were ready to 
obey him and serve him, and to give them- 
selves up to him in every way possible. I am 
not at all surprised that Saul's son and daughter 
and Saul himself fell in love with, and could 
hardly live without, him. It was so all along; 



THE STORY OF A CUP OF WATER. 53 

and even after he became an old man every- 
body was fascinated by him, — even his old 
uncles, — and stood ready to do his bidding 
and consult his wishes. 

It was somewhat, so with Richard Coeur de 
Lion and Napoleon and Mary Stuart and 
Alexander and Julius Caesar; but the personal 
fascination of none of these persons was so 
great as that of David. In some respects he 
was no greater than some of these ; but he had 
a broader and more lovable nature than any 
of them, for he had what not one of them had 
in anything like the same degree, — a great 
and noble generosity. David deserved all the 
love and devotion that was lavished upon him, 
because — let men love him ever so much — 
he loved more in return. 

There was not apparently, at this early time 
of his life, one grain of selfishness about him. 
You know that the word chivalry was not used 
till about a thousand years back, while David 
lived almost three times as long ago ; but he 
was one of the most chivalrous men that ever 
lived. By chivalry I mean a union of honor, 
purity, religion, nobleness, bravery, and devo- 



54 THE STORY OF A CUP OF WATER. 

tion to a cause or person. David excited this 
chivalric devotion in others because he had so 
much of it in himself. And here I will stop a 
moment just to say that if you want to awaken 
any feeling in another towards yourself, you 
must first have it in yourself. I think there is 
a very general notion that in order to awaken 
admiration and love and regard in others one 
must have a fine appearance. There is a great 
deal of misplaced faith in fine clothes and 
bright eyes and clear complexions and pretty 
features ; but I have yet to learn that these ever 
win genuine love and admiration. And so far 
as I have observed, a true sentiment only grows 
out of a corresponding sentiment ; feeling comes 
from feeling; in short, others come at last to 
feel towards us just about as we feel towards 
them. And I never knew a person, young 
or old, to show a kind, generous, hearty dis- 
position to others who was not surrounded by 
friends. And I have seen — I know not how 
many — selfish and unobliging and unsympa- 
thetic persons go friendless all their days in 
spite of wealth and fine appearance. Now, put 
this away in your memory to think of hereafter. 



THE STORY OF A CUP OF WATER. 55 

It was David's great-heartedness that bound 
others to him. At the time of this story he 
was a sort of outlaw, driven without any good 
reason from the court of Saul. But he was 
a man of too much spirit to allow himself to 
be tamely killed, and he loved Saul and his 
family too well to actually make war upon him, 
and he was too good a patriot to give trouble 
to his country, — a pretty hard place he had to 
fill, I can assure you. But he was equal to it, 
and simply bided his time, drawing off into the 
wild and rocky regions where he could hide 
and also protect himself. But he was not a 
man whom people would leave alone. The 
magnetic power that was in him drew kindred 
spirits, and some that were not kindred who 
found it pleasanter to follow a chief in the 
wilds than to live in the dull quiet of their 
homes. But the greater part of them were 
brave, generous, devoted souls, who had come 
to the conclusion that to live with David and 
fight his battles and share his fortunes was 
more enjoyable than to plod along under Saul 
and his petty tyrannies. There were, in par- 
ticular, eleven men of the tribe of Gad, — 



56 THE STORY OF A CUP OF WATER. 

mountaineers, — fierce as lions and swift as 
roes, terrible men in battle, and full of devotion 
to David. In this way he got together quite a 
little army, which he used to defend the bor- 
ders from the Philistines, who were a thieving 
set, and also to defend himself in case Saul 
troubled him. It was not exactly the best sort 
of a life for a man to live ; and had not Da- 
vid been a person of very high principles, 
his followers would have been a band of rob- 
bers living on the country. But David pre- 
vented that, and made them as useful as was 
possible. His headquarters were at the cave 
of Adullam, or what is now called Engedi. 
While here, the Philistines came on a foraging 
expedition as far as Bethlehem, and with so 
large a force that David and his few followers 
were shut up in their fortress, — for how long 
we do not know, — probably for some days. It 
was very dull and wearisome business, impris- 
oned in a rocky defile and unable to do any- 
thing, while the Philistines were stealing the 
harvests that grew on the very spot where he 
had spent his boyhood. 

It was then that what has always seemed to 



THE STORY OF A CUP OF WATER. 57 

me a very touching and beautiful trait of Da- 
vids character showed itself, and that is — a 
feeling of homesickness. Now, there is very 
little respect to be had for a person who is not 
capable of homesickness. To give up to it may 
be weak, but to be incapable of it is a bad sign. 
But in David it took a very poetic form. Close 
by was the home where he was born. There, 
in Bethlehem, he had passed the dreamy years 
of his childhood and youth amidst the love of 
his parents and brothers, whom he now had 
with him ; there he fed his sheep and sang to 
his harp ; and there, morning and evening, he 
gathered with others about the well, — the meet- 
ing-place of his companions, — loved with all 
the passionate energy of his nature, and still 
loved in spite of the troublous times that had 
come upon him. As David broods over these 
memories, he longs with a yearning, homesick 
feeling for Bethlehem and its well. And, like 
a poet as he was, he conceives that if he could 
but drink of its water, it would relieve this 
feverish unrest and longing for the past. It 
was a very natural feeling. You are too young 
to know what it means ; but we who are older 



58 THE STORY OF A CUP OF WATER. 

think of these little things in a strange, yearn- 
ing way. It is the little things of childhood 
that we long for, — to lie under the roof on 
which we heard the rain patter years and years 
ago; to gather fruit in the old orchard; to fish 
in the same streams ; to sit on the same rock, 
or under the same elm or maple, and see the 
sun go down behind the same old hills; to 
drink from the same spring that refreshed us 
in summer days that will not come again, — 
you are too young for this, but we who are 
older know well how David felt. He was not 
a man to hide his feelings, and so he uttered 
his longing for the water of the well by the 
gate of Bethlehem. His words are overheard ; 
and three of these terrible followers of his — 
fierce as lions and fleet as deer — took their 
swords and fought their way through the Phi- 
listines, slaying we know not how many, and 
brought back some of the water. It was 
enough for them that David wanted it. 

Now, some people would say that it was very 
foolish and sentimental of David to be indulg- 
ing in such a whim, and still more foolish in 
these men to gratify it at the risk of their 



THE STORY OF A CUP OF WATER. 59 



lives; but I think there is a bettor way of look- 
ing at it. If David had tegutredthem to pro- 
cure the water at the risk of their lives, it would 
have been very wrong; but the whole thing- 
was unknown to him till the water was brought. 
I prefer to regard it as an act of splendid hero- 
ism, prompted by chivalric devotion, and I will 
not stop to consider whether or not it was sen- 
sible and prudent. .And I want to say to you 
that whenever you sec or hear of an action 
that has these qualities of heroism and gener- 
osity and devotion, it is well to admire and 
praise it, whether it will bear the test of cold 
reason or not. I hope your hearts will never 
get to be so dry and hard that they will not 
beat responsive to brave and noble deeds, even 
if they are not exactly prudent. 

But David took even a higher view of this 
brave and tender act of his lion-faced, deer- 
footed followers. It awoke his religious feel- 
ings; for our sense of what is noble and gener- 
ous and brave lies very close to our religious 
sensibilities. The whole event passes, in Da- 
vid's mind, into the field of religion ; and so 
what does he do? Drink the water, and praise 



60 THE STORY OF A CUP OF WATER. 

his three mighty warriors, and bid them never 
again run such risks to gratify his chance 
wishes ? No. David looks a great deal farther 
into the matter than this. The act seemed to 
him to have a religious character; its devotion 
was so complete and unselfish that it became 
sacred. He felt what I have just said, — that 
a brave and devoted act that incurs danger is 
almost if not quite a religious act. And so he 
treats it in a religious way. He is anxious to 
separate it from himself, although done for him, 
and get it into a service done for God ; and he 
may have thought that he had himself been a 
little selfish. To his mind it would have been 
a mean and low repayment to these men to 
drink their water with loud praises of their 
valor. They had done a Godlike deed, and so 
he will transfer it to God, and make it an act 
as between them and God. I do not know 
that those lion-faced, deer-footed warriors un- 
derstood or appreciated his treatment of their 
act; but David himself very well knew what he 
was about, and you can see that he acted in a 
very high and true way. He will not drink 
the water, but pours it out unto the Lord, and 



THE STORY OF A CUP OF WATER. 6 1 

lets it sink into the ground unused, and, be- 
cause unused, a sort of sacrifice and offering to 
God. Water got with such valor and risk was 
not for man, but for God. Much less was it 
right to use it to gratify a dreamy whim that 
had in it perhaps just a touch of selfishness. 
The bravery and danger had made the water 
sacred, and so he will make a sacred use' 
of it. 

If any one thinks that David was carried 
away by sentimentality, or that he was over- 
scrupulous, one has only to recall how, when 
actually in want, he took the consecrated bread 
from the Tabernacle at Nob, and ate it and 
gave it to his followers. His strong common- 
sense told him that even consecrated bread was 
not too good for hungry men ; but that same 
fine common-sense told him that water pro- 
cured at the risk of life, when not actually 
wanted, had become sacred, and had better be 
turned into a sort of prayer and offering to 
God than wantonly drunk. 

And now, having the story well in mind, I 
will close by drawing out from it one or two 
lessons that seem to me very practical. 



62 THE STORY OF A CUP OF WATER. 

Suppose we were to a.sk, Who acted in the 
noblest way, — the three strong men who got 
the water, or David, who made a sacrifice or liba- 
tion of it? It does not take us long to answer. 
The real greatness of the whole affair was 
with the three men, though David put a beau- 
tiful meaning upon it, and exalted it to its true 
place. Their act was very brave and lofty ; but 
David crowned it with its highest grace by 
carrying it on into religion, — that is, by set- 
ting it before God. 

I see a great many people who are living 
worthy lives, doing a great many kind acts 
and rendering beautiful services, but do not 
take God into their thoughts, nor render their 
services as unto Him. I think everybody 
must see that this act of these lion-faced men 
was more complete when David took it before 
God than as rendered for himself. Why, it 
might take long to tell ; but, briefly, it was 
because the nameless grace of religion has 
been added to it, and because it was connected 
with that great, dear Name that hallows every- 
thing brought under it. 

Many of you have brought here offerings of 



THE STORY OF A CUP OF WATER. 63 

flowers, sweet and fit for this day and place 
and purpose. Some may have brought them 
simply with the thought of helping out the 
occasion, or to please your teacher, or because 
it is beautiful in itself to heap up beauty in 
this large way ; but if, as you worked here 
yesterday, or brought your flowers to-day, your 
thoughts silently rose to God, saying, " These 
are for Thy altars, — this glory of tint and per- 
fume is not for us, but for Thee" — then, I 
think, every poet, every person of fine feeling, 
every true thinker, would say that the latter 
is more beautiful than the former. I hate to 
see a life that does not take hold of God ; 
I hate to see fine acts and brave lives and 
noble dispositions and generous emotions that 
do not reach up into a sense of God ; I hate 
to see persons — and I see a great many such 
nowadays — striving after beautiful lives and 
true sentiments and large thoughts without 
ever a word of prayer, or thought of God, or 
anything to show they love and venerate Christ. 
I hate to see it, both because they might rise 
so much higher and because at last it fails ; for 
God must enter into every thought and senti- 



64 THE STORY OF A CUP OF WATER. 

ment and purpose in order to make it gen- 
uine, and truly beautiful, and altogether right. 
That God may be in your thoughts ; that you 
may learn to confess Him in all your ways, 
to serve and fear aad know and love Him, — 
this is the wish with which I greet you to-day, 
and the prayer that I offer in your behalf. 

I found, the other day, some lines by Faber 
— a Catholic poet — so beautifully giving this 
last thought of our sermon that I will read 
them to you : — 

" O God ! who wert my childhood's love, 
My boyhood's pure delight, 
A presence felt the livelong day, 
A welcome fear at night, 

" I know not what I thought of Thee ; 
What picture I had made 
Of that Eternal Majesty 

To whom my childhood prayed. 

"With age Thou grewest more divine, 
More glorious than before ; 
I feared Thee with a deeper fear, 
Because I loved Thee more. 



THE STORY OF A CUP OF WATER. 65 

" Thou broadenest out with every year 
Each breath of life to meet. 
I scarce can think Thou art the same, 
Thou art so much more sweet. 

"Father! what hast Thou grown to now? 
A joy all joys above, 
Something more sacred than a fear, 
More tender than a love. 

" With gentle swiftness lead me on, 
Dear God ! to see Thy face ; 
And meanwhile in my narrow heart, 
Oh, make Thyself more space." 



i88i. 
THE STORY OF THE BOOK. 



It is the armory of light, — 

Let constant use but keep it bright, 

You '11 find it yields 
To holy hands and humble hearts 

More swords and shields 
Than sin hath snares, or hell hath darts. 

Only be sure 

The hands be pure 
That hold these weapons, and the eyes 
Those of turtles, — chaste and true, 

Wakeful and wise. 

Richard Crashaw. 




IV. 

THE STORY OF THE BOOK. 

" Search the Scriptitres" 
St. John v. 39. 

HE more I have to do with young 
people, the more do I find that 
they are interested in history ; and 
for one, I am glad that history is 
now written in such a way that 
young people can be interested in it. It is not 
till lately that this has been done. In former 
times it was written only for adults, and too often 
in such a way as not to interest them, being 
full of dates and dry statistics of reigns, and of 
laws, and of the causes that led to wars, without 
much to say of the people, of how they lived 
and what they did. But all this is changed, 
and now we have histories that interest old and 
young; and one must be very stupid who is 
not pleased with them. There is Dickens's 
" Child's History of England," nearly the best 



JO THE STORY OF THE BOOK. 

book Mr. Dickens ever wrote, and one of the 
best books of history any of us can read ; and 
there is Coffin's " Story of Liberty'' and " Boys 
of '76," and Irving's " Life of Columbus," and 
Higginson's "History of the United States," 
and others that I need not mention. And for 
older young people there are Walter Scott's 
novels, that give almost the entire history of 
England and a good part of the History of 
France, and two that will tell you all about 
the Crusades ; only you must read real his- 
tories as well, so as to get the story quite 
straight. And there are Charles ' Kingsley's 
books : " Hereward," that describes the early 
history of England, and " Westward Ho " (that 
I forgot to speak of in my lectures to young 
men a year ago), which will tell you all about 
those first adventurers who left England in 
their little ships and sailed up and down our 
coasts and among the West Indies, — one of the 
most fascinating and instructive books in our 
language. Lately a German — Ebers — has 
been writing some very good books for young 
people, half history and half story, which, if 
you read carefully, you will know as much as 



THE STORY OF THE BOOK. 7 1 

you need to know of Egypt and Persia. New, 
if your minds have not been utterly spoiled by 
reading the Dime and other such novels, and 
those miserable illustrated newspapers, which 
men ought to be ashamed to sell, and you 
ought to be ashamed to read, — if, I say, your 
minds have not been spoiled by reading this mis- 
erable trash, there is nothing that will interest 
you so much as some of these histories. The 
history of almost anything is interesting ; it sat- 
isfies our natural desire to know about things. 
For the mind is very like the body; it has 
an appetite and gets hungry. Three times a 
day, at least, the body cries out for food, and 
all the while the mind is crying out for some- 
thing to feed it. That is the reason children 
ask so many questions. People often call it 
curiosity, as though it were some trifling thing, 
and not to be regarded ; but it is instead a 
hunger for knowledge. God put it in us so 
that we may come to know something. Show 
me a child who does not ask questions, and 
I shall see one who will never amount to 
anything, and will grow up ignorant and 
stupid. 



72 THE STORY OF THE BOOK. 

Now, as I said, the history of almost anything 
is interesting. If you have a fine dog or horse, 
you like to know all about it, where it came 
from, its age, who owned it, etc. You like to 
know the history of your parents, what they 
did when they were young, where they lived 
and travelled, and all that. " Tell me what you 
did when you were a boy," are nearly the most 
familiar words I hear. Even a stone may have 
an interesting history if you can find any one 
wise enough to tell it. Take some of these 
great granite boulders that are scattered over 
our hills, half rounded and with sharp cloven 
sides, — a strange history they have, — long 
journeys by sea and land, and terrible conflicts 
with frost and ice and water; starting away up 
in Greenland or Labrador on floating moun- 
tains of ice, and sailing south when the ocean 
covered all this region, till the sun melted their 
icy ship and dropped them just where you see 
them, — a very strange history indeed. I often 
wish some one would tell me about these 
" flints," or " hard-heads," that you see broken 
up by fire and water when they lie in the way 
of the builder or road-maker, — just as it is 



THE STORY OF THE BOOK. J$ 

said that Hannibal made a path for his ele- 
phants, over the Alps, by building fires on the 
rocks and then pouring on vinegar ; but I 
never could quite believe this story, especially 
the part about the vinegar. Hannibal was a 
very wise general, but he never thought so far 
ahead as to take along vinegar for making a 
road over the St. Bernard Pass. 

So a book may have a history. Once a lady in 
Newport showed me a book carefully wrapped 
in flannel to keep out the damp Newport' air, 
— a dingy, ill-shaped, leather-bound volume, 
printed on dull, grimy paper, in poor, blotting 
type, — altogether a very uninteresting book ; 
but it is worth hundreds, if not thousands, of 
dollars, for it is Eliot's Indian Bible. But one 
man in all the world can read it and know 
what it means. The Indian tribes for whom 
Eliot made it are all dead, the language is 
dead, and the Bible alone lives, — a few copies 
here and there, carefully cherished, and worth 
almost, if not more than, their weight in gold. 

But I must begin to speak of what I spe- 
cially have in mind, and that is, the history of 
the New Testament. You all have one, but 



74 THE STORY OF THE BOOK. 

perhaps not all of you know its history. It is 
so common, that possibly we have not thought 
that it has a history ; it is just the Bible, and 
that is all. But it has a long and eventful 
story, — between seventeen and eighteen hun- 
dred years long, and a history of a hundred or 
two vears that we do not know much about, — 
only hints and guesses. Still we know for a 
certainty that Sts. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and 
John, wrote the Gospels, St. Luke the Acts, 
and Sts. Paul, Peter, James, and John wrote 
the Epistles, and John the Apocalypse, or 
Revelation. 

I speak to you young people on this subject 
because just now everybody is talking about 
the New Version, as it is called, — that is, a 
new translation of the New Testament just 
finished and published. What we older people 
are so much interested in, young people also 
cannot fail to wish to know something about, 
and I think I can tell you why we have the 
New Version. 

Printing, you remember, was invented in 
the fifteenth century, and nearly the first book 
printed was the Bible, in 1460. As the New 



THE STORY OF THE BOOK. 75 

Testament was written in the first century, 
there was a period of about fourteen hundred 
years when it was copied with pen and ink, — 
every one written out by hand ! Think what 
a labor it must have been ! And yet a great 
many copies were made, and nearly every 
Christian community had one ; but they were 
read chiefly by the ministers and priests, and 
were often kept in the churches. Now, if 
everybody could have had a Bible for the first 
five hundred years, a great many of the cor- 
ruptions of the Romish Church would not have 
existed. But thefe were only a few books, and 
not many people could read, and so the priests 
had everything their own way. 

This New Testament, of which I am giving 
you a history, was first written upon papyrus, — 
a sort of paper made from the inner lining of 
a reed found chiefly in the Nile. These thin 
strips of papyrus lining were pasted together 
crosswise, and then pressed by heavy weights 
so as to make a smooth surface. A tolerably 
good paper was thus made, though not a very 
strong one ; yet it answered the purpose. The 
main trouble was, it quickly wore out; for, as 



76 THE STORY OF THE BOOK. 

but few books were made, each one was used a 
great deal, and of course they would not last 
long. Papyrus was used as late as the eleventh 
century, when the French began to make paper 
from cotton. But long before this — indeed, so 
early that we know not when — another kind of 
paper, called parchment or vellum, was made 
from the skins of animals, commonly sheep. 
It is used still for wills and diplomas, on ac- 
count of its durability. But it was expensive 
as compared with papyrus, and we have no 
knowledge that it was used for the New Tes- 
tament till the fourth century, that is, in three 
hundred and something. All the papyrus cop- 
ies of the New Testament have perished, worn 
out or decayed ; but in the fourth and fifth 
centuries it began to be written on parchment. 
How extensively this was done at first, we do 
not know ; probably only a few copies were 
made till many years after. At any rate, there 
are only two copies in Greek that date back as 
far as the fourth century, and there are but one 
or two that belong to the fifth century. After 
that there are many copies or parts of copies. 
Besides these early manuscripts there are trans- 



THE STORY OF THE BOOK. 77 

lations from the original Greek into Latin, 
Syriac, Coptic, and other languages, that are 
even older. The Latin and Syriac belong to 
the second, century ; but, being translations, 
they are not so valuable as the old Greek cop- 
ies. This is rather dry talk ; but I hope you 
will listen attentively, for it is well you should 
know what I am telling you. 

Now let me say something about these two 
or three oldest Greek manuscripts of the New 
Testament, written on parchment with pen and 
ink. Fifty years ago, it was thought that a 
certain manuscript in the Vatican Library, at 
Rome, that was made in the fourth century, 
was the oldest in existence, and it was named 
Codex (or Copy) B. For some reason a later 
copy, belonging to the fifth century, and now 
kept in the British Museum, is called Codex A, 
or the Alexandrine. Next comes Codex C, 
which is to be found in Paris ; but it is so faded 
that it can hardly be read. Then comes Codex 
D, written in the sixth century. 

In 1859 a great German scholar by the name 
of Tischendorf became convinced that there 
were valuable manuscripts in the Greek con- 



78 THE STORY OF THE BOOK. 

vents near Mt. Sinai, and so he made a jour- 
ney there. To his great surprise he found an 
entire copy in Greek of the New Testament 
older than the Vatican B, and therefore older 
than any in existence. It is a very interesting 
story that he had to tell when he returned, — 
how he concealed his great joy from the monks 
(for he felt somewhat as Columbus did when he 
discovered America), and took the parchment to 
his room, and pored over it by the dim light of 
his lamp all night long, and how, afterward, he 
got permission from the Head of the Greek 
Church to bring it to Germany, where it was 
carefully lithographed and a few copies printed 
for the great libraries of the world. 

Now I think you know where our New Tes- 
tament comes from, — chiefly from Copy B in 
the Vatican Library at Rome, Copy A in the 
British Museum, and this new copy found by 
Tischendorf, which, because it is the oldest, is 
called by the first letter of the Hebrew alpha- 
bet, Aleph, or the Sinaitic Manuscript. All 
these have been most carefully copied and 
printed, so that scholars have access to them. 
When a student of the New Testament wants 



THE STORY OF THE BOOK. 79 

to find out exactly what its authors actually 
wrote, he looks over these three versions, — B; 
A, and Aleph, or the Vatican, the Alexandrine, 
and the Sinaitic, — and still others ; then he 
looks into the Latin, the Syriac, and the Coptic 
translations ; then he turns over the writings 
of the Early Church fathers, Irenaeus, Clement, 
Tertullian, and others, and finds, if he can, the 
passage quoted; if they all give a certain pas- 
sage alike, he feels quite sure it is exactly as it 
was first written. If they differ, he weighs one 
side against the other; and very nice work it 
is, for a great many things need to be consid- 
ered. For example, if the Sinaitic copy and the 
Syriac or Latin translation agree, and all others 
disagree, the former, though only two, outweigh 
all the rest, though there may be twenty, sim- 
ply because they are older ; for the Syriac and 
Latin translations were made very early. 

Now you will ask, Do they differ very much ? 
No ; hardly ever in such a way as to affect the 
sense, which leads us to think that the men 
who copied the New Testament with pen and 
ink were very careful, knowing how important 
was their work. 



80 THE STORY OF THE BOOK. 

I will now try to tell you how the New Tes- 
tament was first written. It was written in 
capital letters, without punctuation, — not a 
period, nor a colon, nor a comma, — and without 
division into chapters or verses or paragraphs. 
All this matter of punctuation and chapter 
and verse is a recent thing. The division into 
chapters was made in the thirteenth century by 
Cardinal Hugo, and the verses were marked off 
by Robert Stephens in 1551 ; and he had much 
better have not done it, for it has caused end- 
less mischief and confusion. 

Now about the translations ; and this is the 
most important part of all. You will keep in 
mind that the New Testament was written in 
Greek, but the Greek language died out. Be- 
sides, Christianity went where Greek was un- 
known, — all through the Roman Empire. 
Hence, very early, a translation was made into 
Latin, and called the Vulgate, because it was 
for the vulgus, — the Latin word for common, 
or unlearned, people. But, by and by, Chris- 
tianity spread into countries where Latin was 
not spoken, — into Gaul and Germany and 
Britain. Still, for a longtime no translations 



THE STORY OF THE BOOK. 8 1 

were made into the language of these nations. 
The Latin Bible was used ; and when the 
preacher quoted it, he first gave the Latin and 
then translated it. Only the learned, who were 
very few, could read Latin ; hence there came 
to be great ignorance of the Bible, and all sorts 
of superstitions and false beliefs took posses- 
sion of the people, and the Bible came to be 
almost a forgotten and unused book. Even 
Luther had hardly ever seen one till long 
after he had become a monk. Translations 
were made in Spain and France and Germany, 
even before the time of Luther; but as they 
were not printed, but copied by pen, there were 
but few copies. In Bohemia, Huss translated 
the Bible, and was put to death for his work, — 
strange payment for such a service ! Away 
back as far as 660 or 670, Caedmon, an English 
monk, turned a part of the Latin Bible into 
English poetry. And then, in 1381, Wickliffe 
made a straight translation of it into English ; 
but you would hardly be able to read it, so 
much has the language changed since then. 
He was not burned, as Huss wag ; but after 
his death his mouldering bones were taken 

6 



82 THE STORY OF THE BOOK. 

out of the grave and burnt to ashes and cast 
into a brook — the Swift — that empties into 
the river Avon, which flows into the Severn. 
Hence that verse, — but who wrote it nobody 
knows, — 

"The Avon to the Severn runs, 
The Severn to the sea; 
And Wicklifife's dust shall spread abroad, 
Wide as the waters be. ,? 

But. printing had not yet been discovered, 
and Wickliffe s Bible was copied on paper and 
vellum just as before, and so it never reached 
the common people. Then came Purveys 
translation, four years later, and about the same 
as Wickliffe's ; and then, a hundred years and 
more later, Tyndale made another translation. 
Printing had just been discovered, and he went 
to Cologne and Worms, where he brought it 
out in type, little by little. When he took it to 
England it caused a great uproar and excite- 
ment. Everybody who could read and could 
get hold of it, read it ; and it was said that if 
three men were seen talking together on the 
street, it was safe to say they were talking of 



THE STORY OF THE BOOK. 83 

Tyndale's Bible. But this Bible was only the 
New Testament, and the Pentateuch, or the 
first five books of the Old Testament. But in 
1535, not long after, — indeed, he was at work 
translating at the same time with Tyndale, — 
Miles Coverdale brought out the whole Bible. 
This too was printed out of England, — in 
Antwerp. The first entire printed English 
Bible was eleven and three-quarters inches 
long and eight inches wide, and was printed in 
1 535, as I said, and again in 1537, under the 
patronage of the King. Other Bibles were 
printed, such as Matthew's and Taverner's 
and the " Great Bible," brought out under 
Henry VIII., and costing thirty dollars, and 
the " Geneva Bible," which w 7 as much cheaper, 
published in the time of Queen Mary. This 
continued to be used for two generations. 
Then, under Queen Elizabeth, the " Bishop's 
Bible" was printed; and finally, in 161 1, the 
King James version, which is the one used up 
to the present day. It is a long time, you see, 
that this has been in use, — two hundred and 
seventy years. The reason is, that the transla- 
tion was done so well, and that the language 



84 THE STORY OF THE BOOK. 

has changed but little since. If you were to 
meet an Englishman of the time of Wickliffe, 
you could hardly understand him, but you 
could converse without trouble with those who 
lived in the time of Queen Elizabeth and King 
James. This translation was made by a large 
body of very learned men, and occupied seven 
years ; but, good as it was, the people were so 
much attached to the Geneva and Bishop's 
Bibles that it was forty years before it came 
into general use, though it had the sanction of 
the King and the Church. 

You are now all ready to ask why we have 
just had another translation, or rather revision, 
made. It is not a month since the New Ver- 
sion was published, and already millions of 
copies have been sold, and there is hardly a 
man, woman, or child in England or America 
that has not at least seen it. I think I can tell 
you some of the reasons. 

i. The language has changed a little, and 
some words in the Bible now mean exactly 
the opposite of what they meant in 1611. 
For example, " let," which now means to permit, 
then meant to hinder. Look at Romans i. 13, 



THE STORY OF THE BOOK. 85 

and you will see that the old version says just 
what St. Paul did not mean. 

2. Though the translation was good, it was 
not so good as might be. Those old scholars 
did not always get the tenses of the verbs cor- 
rectly, and they also let their prejudices affect 
their choice of words, — that is, they did not give 
the exact meaning of the Greek, but a meaning 
that favored their private views. 

3. Since then, Tischendorf has discovered 
the great Sinaitic Manuscript, and other dis- 
coveries have been made, so that we know far 
better, to-day, what the original Greek Testa- 
ment was than did the scholars of 1611. 

Now, we may like or dislike the New Version, 
it may sound strange and all that ; but when we 
read it, we get more nearly the exact meaning 
of what Sts. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and 
Paul wrote than we do in the King James ver- 
sion. It was made by the most learned men in 
England and America, and has taken about 
ten years. It does not change the meaning 
very much, but it makes it clearer. In some 
way it seems to take hold of the mind more 
sharply, and one has more of the feeling that 



86 THE STORY OF THE BOOK. 

he is reading something that was actually said 
and done. But I must confess I do not think 
it is quite so rich and beautiful as the old 
version. 

If you ask, Had I better use it? I an- 
swer, By all means have a copy of your own, 
and read it along with the old version, to see 
the changes. But it does not much matter 
which you read, if you will read one. They 
mean the same ; they tell us of the same Fa- 
ther in Heaven, and of the same Saviour and 
Master; they point out the same path of duty; 
they reveal the same heaven. 

Two men, while on a sea-voyage, were one 
day conversing as to what book they would 
choose if they should chance to be wrecked on 
some island, and could have but one. One said 
he would choose Shakspeare ; the other said, " I 
would choose the Bible, — there is no end to 
that book." There is this strange and wonder- 
ful thing about it, that we never get to the end 
of it ; and the reason must be that it tells of 
endless things. 



1882. 
FOUR JEWELS. 



Be good, dear child, and let who will be clever ; 

Do noble things, not dream them, all day long ; 
And so make life, death, and that vast forever 
One grand, sweet song. 

Charles Kingsley. 




V. 

FOUR JEWELS. 

" Thou hast the dew of thy youth" 
Psalm ex. 3. 

jE have had so much rain lately that 
we hardly need any dew ; but when 
the showers grow less frequent, the 
heat increases, and the earth be- 
comes dry, and the flowers wither 
under the hot sun, and the corn shrivels, we 
shall begin to thank God for giving us his 
dew. 

Now, a dew is nothing but a very fine 
shower; the drops are the same, but smaller. 
Whether they rise or fall is a question, though 
we have been so long used to speak of " falling 
dews," that I presume we shall keep on doing 
so. The process is somewhat like this: the 
air has moisture in it, — particles of water cut 
into fineness by the sun's rays as if by millions 
of sharp knives, and so light that they float 



90 FOUR JEWELS. 



in the air like bubbles, and perhaps they are 
bubbles ; but when the sun goes down, and 
these sharp knives stop playing upon them, 
they fall together and make a drop of dew. 
It is called condensation, which means growing 
thick and coming together, or a thickening 
together. It is a singular fact that the dew 
always goes where it is most needed, unless 
somebody or something shuts it away. The 
grass needs a great deal of moisture, and so 
it settles thickest in the grass. You might 
as well walk through the brook as through a 
good pasture, on a June morning, after a clear 
night. All leaves need moisture. Each one 
has innumerable little throats, and very thirsty 
ones, that drink sunshine all day and dew all 
night, — the only topers we care to have any- 
thing to do with, and very harmless ones, as 
they are chiefly water-drinkers. Now in Syria, 
where this Psalm was written, very little rain 
falls in summer, and the dew has all the work 
to do in watering the grain and trees and 
plants. All day the wind blows from the Med- 
iterranean, bearing on its wings invisible bits of 
moisture gathered from the waves ; and when 



FOUR JEWELS. 9 1 



the sun goes down, the little particles rush to- 
gether, and drop or form on every leaf and 
twig and spear of growing grain, creeping into 
the olive-trees, trickling down to the roots of 
the rose of Sharon, bathing the great cedars 
of Lebanon in clouds of mist, and becoming 
almost a rain on Hermon. Very beautiful was 
the dew to those old Jews. They not only 
knew there would be no olives, nor wheat, nor 
grapes, without the detv ; but they went farther 
in their thought, and saw the beauty of the 
dew, for nature is never so beautiful as when 
clothed in dew in the morning. I am not 
going to describe it to you, but I want you, 
some morning, to go into a garden, or, better, 
off upon the hills, and see what the dew does, 
and how much finer everything looks than it 
does after it is dried away. The dew speaks 
to two of our senses, — the smell and the 
sight. In the evening it falls on the blossoms 
and dissolves the waxy substance that holds 
their perfume, so that it floats away and 
reaches our nostrils. Flowers smell sweetest in 
the night, when we cannot see them. The 
sense of smell is our weakest sense ; and so it 



92 FOUR JEWELS. 



uses the darkness, when. the attention is not 
diverted by sight, which is our strongest sense. 
Now is not this a very wonderful arrange- 
ment ? But when morning comes, the dew, 
hanging on every leaf and flower-petal, — the 
only pendent jewel that seems to me beautiful 
or appropriate, — arrests our sense of sight, 
so that we care less for the perfume. 

The main feeling that the dew awakens in 
us is that of freshness. The dew freshens 
everything, — makes everything seem new and 
young. Now this last word is just what I have 
been aiming at all along. The dew makes 
all things seem young. The morning is the 
youth of the day, — the dew makes it seem 
so, — and so David said, " Thou hast the dew of 
thy youth." What he meant is, that one has 
a certain freshness and beauty and strength 
and opportunity in youth. I think I might con- 
dense this, — just as scattered bits of moisture 
are condensed into a drop of dew, — and say 
that youth is opportunity. And this is the 
one thing I wish to impress on you to-day, — 
that youth is opportunity to do something and 
to become somebody. 



FOUR JEWELS. 93 



This opportunity belongs only to the young. 
When one becomes a man or woman, the full 
opportunity is gone ; one must, for the most 
part, remain what one is, and keep on doing 
what one begins to do. I do not see much 
change in people after they get to be twenty- 
five or thirty, except going on in the way they 
started. And it does not require much of a 
prophet to foretell the character and career of 
people when they have come to adult years. 
As I look over those with whom I grew up, 
they have turned out just about as they began. 
Now is your opportunity ; now is your chance 
to become the men and women you wish to 
be ; now is your time for beginning to do 
those things that you expect to do in all your 
coming years. But the thing that I am most 
concerned about is your character, because, 
sooner or later, everything turns on that. I do 
not mean merely that if one is vicious or indo- 
lent or low, one will make a failure of life, — 
everybody knows that, — but rather, that unless 
one early becomes fixed in certain high princi- 
ples of conduct and feeling, one will not only 
never attain to them, but will turn out badly. 



94 FOUR JEWELS. 



There is a great deal that might be said on 
this subject, but I will speak only of four 
things that seem to me to lie at the roots of 
all high character and attainment, and so I will 
give you four rules in regard to them ; but, as 
I wish them to go a little deeper than rules, 
I will call them principles, — habits of feeling 
and thinking, as well as mere ways of acting. 
These rules or principles may seem to you 
quite commonplace, but that is the very reason 
they are important. 

i. Learn to love and to speak the truth, and 
to hate a lie. 

I consider the tendency to, or the habit of, 
lying the worst and most surely fatal sign 
that a young person can show. I know that 
very young children sometimes are untruthful, 
before the conscience awakes ; but if, later on, 
they incline to lie, or to deceive, or to hide 
the truth, their future is very dark. I would 
rather a boy or girl of eight or ten would show 
any other evil tendency than that of deception. 
There are reasons for this that you cannot yet 
fully understand, such as these: society rests 



FOUR JEWELS. 95 



upon truth, and a liar is an enemy of society, 
and renders it impossible, — the world could not 
hold together if all were liars ; lying destroys 
what we call character, — a liar at last gets to 
be without character ; he may possibly be hon- 
est and pure in his other habits, but he has no 
character, because the habit of lying blots it 
out, and brings him into a state where he can- 
not tell the difference between right and wrong. 
A man may steal, and he will always know that 
stealing is wrong ; or get drunk, and he will 
always know and feel that it is wicked and 
debasing; but the habit of lying brings one 
into a state in which one does not know and 
feel it to be wrong, and at last into such a con- 
dition that one cannot tell the difference be- 
tween the truth and a lie. It just destroys 
character; it is a sort of dry rot, such as we 
sometimes see in timber, — it looks sound and 
fair on the outside, but you can crush it in 
your hand. A liar seems to me just this, — 
hollow, without substance or reality; lay hold 
of him with strong, honest hands, and he crum- 
bles into dust and nothingness. A liar comes 
the nearest to being nobody of all evil-doers, 



96 FOUR JEWELS. 



for the simple reason that lying takes away 
from a man everything that goes to make up a 
man. In some way it seems to empty him of 
every other good quality. Hence " liar " is the 
worst name that can be given a person. Now, a 
liar is simply one who tells lies, any sort of lies, 
for any reason or to any person. Young peo- 
ple sometimes justify themselves in telling cer- 
tain kinds of lies and to certain persons. They 
will tell fibs to escape detection and punish- 
ment when parents or employers seem to be 
severe and exacting ; lies to get out of scrapes ; 
lies to teachers, as though they were not so bad 
as if told to others. And this is often regarded 
as smart and keen ; but it is all, from first to 
last, very bad and weak business, and, so far 
from being smart or keen, is very dull and 
stupid. But you say, " Do not smart and«keen 
men lie ? " Yes, smart and keen just as snakes 
are, and as venomous and disgusting, and as 
sure to have their heads crushed whenever 
they come near the heel of an honest man. 

Now, the rule I wish to offer you is this: 
Never suffer yourself, for any reason, to utter 
an untruth to any person. Settle it with your- 



FOUR JEWELS. 97 



self that, come what will, you will never lie. 
If telling the truth brings punishment, bear it 
like a man, — that is the way to become a 
man ; lying is the way to undo manhood. If 
telling the truth turns you out of school, or 
out of a situation, or out of doors, tell it and 
take the consequences ; they will not, in the 
long run, be so bad as the consequences of 
lying. 

" Cowards tell lies, and those that fear the rod ; 
Dare to be true. Nothing can need a lie ; 
A fault, which needs it most, grows two thereby." 

But I want you to carry the matter a little 
farther. Learn to hate a lie and to despise a 
liar; learn to love truth, and to be proud of 
yourself as one who will not condescend to lie. 
Truthfulness is a sort of moral neatness and 
cleanliness. When young people get to be 
about twelve or fourteen, they begin to be very 
particular about their dress and appearance ; 
they are troubled if their clothes are soiled or 
ill-shaped, and, commonly, they begin to be par- 
ticular as to the cleanliness of their persons, — 
face and hands, and nails and teeth : it is a 

7 



98 FOUR JEWELS. 



good thing and a good, sign ; it shows self- 
respect. 

Now, truthfulness is just the same sort of 
thing in character. A liar is clothed in moral 
rags, and defiled with filth throughout. The 
dress, the fresh suits, the jewelry, the white 
hands and teeth, the artistically arranged hair, — 
these go for nothing if there is a spirit or habit 
of deception ; if you say one thing and mean 
another; if you give false excuses; if, under 
some stress, you utter falsehoods ; if you tol- 
erate in yourself a low standard of truth- 
telling. I think there is hardly anything in this 
world so beautiful as a thoroughly truthful 
child ; nothing nobler than a young man who 
has made up his mind that, come what will, he 
will not lie ; nothing so lovely as a young girl 
whose every word is in keeping with strictest 
truth. The straightest, surest path to respect 
and confidence and success is through truth; 
and the straightest, shortest path to failure is 
through falsehood. No liar ever long pros- 
pered in this world, and there is no fate in the 
next world so fearfully pictured as the part of 
liars. 



FOUR JEWELS. 99 



2. Learn to hate all impurity or indelicacy 
of thought or speech or conduct. 

God has put into all of us a sense of mod- 
esty ; it is both a grace and a protection. 
Nearly all I can say on this subject is this : 
respect and obey to the uttermost this divine 
law of modesty that you find in your minds ; 
it is God's voice within you. I am sorry to 
say that young persons often make false dis- 
tinctions on this subject. They will say to 
one another what they would not say to their 
parents ; they will sometimes do that which 
they would blush to have known ; they will 
read books and papers in secret that they know 
are unfit to be read and looked at ; they indulge 
their imagination in thoughts that they would 
not utter ; they will go just so far, but no farther. 
Now, there is but one rule on this subject for 
everybody, — boys and girls, men and women, 
old and young, — and that is, keep a rigorous 
control over yourself in this matter. I might 
put it in another form : respect yourself. Have 
a rule about it ; don't speak of, don't listen to, 
don't read, doi>'t countenance, anything for- 
bidden by this law of modesty and purity. It 



IOO FOUR JEWELS. 



is the glory of a man to have clean lips and a 
clean mind; it is the glory of a woman not to 
know evil even in her thoughts. 

There is a border-land of simple delicacy 
lying between purity and vice, where young 
people sometimes feel at liberty to wander 
farther than is best. The touch is not so re- 
spectful as it ought to be, and, if too familiar, 
is not resented so proudly as it ought to be. 
Young people often wander about rather care- 
lessly in this border-land, and come to no visible 
harm ; but, after all, we do not like to see the 
down rubbed off from a peach, or even one 
petal of a rose crushed, or ever so slight a 
stain within the cup of a lily. But there is no 
fruit or flower in the world so sacredly beau- 
tiful as young womanhood, or deserves so 
delicate care to keep its glory and perfection. 
There is no treasure in this world so rich as 
the consciousness of utter purity ; and in order 
to have it, one must keep one's self free from 
any contact that even seems to sully it. A 
woman should not only respect, but venerate 
herself as sacred, and therefore not to be 
touched, or spoken to, or treated otherwise than 



FOUR JEWELS. IOI 



accords with this sacred purity. And a fine 
manliness shows itself in nothing more clearly 
than in a chivalrous respect for woman, — treat- 
ing her always, and in every instance, with a 
delicacy that reaches to reverence. 

3. The third rule is about honor. 

I mean very nearly what you mean when 
you speak of fairness, — the opposite of what 
you call meanness, — only I think honor a some- 
what better and nobler word. For the most 
part, young people have a pretty keen sense of 
honor, so that the main thing is to keep it fresh 
and active. But it is something also that needs 
to be used with intelligence. There is such a 
thing as a false standard of honor, and it is apt 
to get mixed up with pride and conceit. Some- 
times we are honorable and chivalrous to our set, 
and unfair or ungenerous to others, or to those 
beneath us, — though none are really beneath 
us. True honor makes us honorable to every 
human being, and even to animals. If I were 
to define it, I would say it is, first, a fine sense 
of self-respect, and then an equally fine sense 
of respect for others and their rights. Don't 



102 .FOUR JEWELS. 



pay much attention to your own rights, but be 
very careful about the rights of others. I wish 
all the older ones of the young people here 
would read the " Idyls of the King" by Tenny- 
son, just to get filled with the spirit of nobility 
that pervades them, — especially as seen in King 
Arthur. And I would not object if the older 
boys w r ere to read Thackeray's " Newcomes," in 
order to get a true picture of a gentleman. I 
myself am very fond of John Ridd in " Lorna 
Doone." It is a great thing for a young man 
to come into contact — either personally or 
through a book — with a man of high and 
noble honor. I do not mean one of these com- 
mon creatures who manages to dress well, and 
spends his spare time at a club, and bets on 
horse-races, and .drinks in what he calls a gen- 
tlemanly way, and gambles in what he calls 
a gentlemanly way, — this common individual 
is the farthest from being a gentleman ; but I 
mean a Sir Galahad or a Colonel Newcome. 
I mean the man who respects himself too much 
to drink at a bar, or in a club-room, or in the 
way of " treats ;" who has too high a sense of 
the rights of others to take their money on a 



FOUR JEWELS. IO 



J 



wager, whether won by a race or by cards or 
at a billiard table ; who is kind and truthful and 
pure; who would lose his right hand sooner 
than do an unfair or mean thing ; — it is a great 
thing for a young person to come near, and 
feel the influence of, such a man. 

I think that no one so utterly forfeits his 
character for honor, as one who in any way 
gambles. Betting is the most vulgar of all 
vulgar things. To put the money of another 
man in your pocket as the result of a wager or 
a game of chance, is something that no self- 
respecting man will do. " But do they not 
do it ? " you ask. No ; the habit puts one out 
of the class known as gentlemen. Of course, 
it should go deeper than this, and become a 
principle, — a matter of right and wrong. To 
take another's money — as gamblers do — is 
next door to theft. We may take money as a 
gift, if there is just ground for it, — though we 
ought to be rather shy of that, — but to take it 
by outwitting somebody, or by an appeal to 
chance, has in it the very essence of dishonor 
and meanness. There is hardly any vice that 
so eats away manliness as gambling. Drunk- 



104 FOUR JEWELS. 



enness makes worse havoc with the body, but it 
leaves one more a man. 

But a fine sense of honor covers other things. 
It shuts off gossip and backbiting and insin- 
cerity, and all small and petty ways in social 
intercourse and business. It teaches one to re- 
spect others, and keeps one from prying into 
the affairs of others, from suspicion and exclu- 
siveness, from disdainful ways and revenge and 
hatred. It utterly forbids tale-bearing, and 
" telling of others," and, of course, all untruth- 
fulness. 

This sense of honor is not something that 
you can put on and lay off; it must be culti- 
vated, and it can only spring from a kind, true, 
generous, brave heart. If one has not this, or 
will not get one by care and thought and will, 
there is not much that can be done for him, and 
not much but ill can be expected of him. 

4. The last thing I will name is reverence. 
This is a very high and beautiful quality, and 
the greatest; some poet calls it "the mother of 
all virtues," and I think he is right. I will not 
stop to analyze it, but will only say, in a word, 



FOUR JEWELS. 105 



what it will lead you to do. It will keep you 
from all profanity ; it will lead you to speak the 
name of God quietly ; to respect all worship, 
and all expression of religious feeling ; to treat 
all sacred things in a careful and delicate way; 
to respect the aged, the good, the wise, and 
those in high position ; it will keep you from 
scoffing, from ridicule, from contempt of others, 
because God made them. 

It is a fortunate thing if a young person 
comes into the world with a strong natural 
sense of reverence. It is the richest soil of the 
human mind ; all good things grow in it, and it 
is a soil in which hardly any weed can find root, 
and the things that grow in it will last forever, 
because it is God's garden, and He never suffers 
any of His fruits and flowers to perish. 

I shall not soon look into your faces again, — 
not for three months at least, — but, as I say 
" good-by " for the summer, let me add to my 
good wishes for your health and pleasure, the 
request that you will think of and remember 
these four things as the foundation of char- 
acter, — Truth, Purity, Honor^ Reverence. 



1883. 

THE GOOD, THE BETTER, 
THE BEST. 



Look up and not down ; 
Look forward and not back ; 
Look out and not in ; 
And lend a hand. 

Motto of the Harry Wadsworth Club. 



VI. 



THE GOOD, THE BETTER, THE BEST. 

" In all things I gave you an exai7iple, how that so laboring 
ye ought to help the weak, and to remember the words of the 
Lord Jesus, how He himself said, It is more blessed to give 
than to received 

Acts xx. 35. 




OU all know something about the 
Koran, — at least, that it was writ- 
ten by Mahomet. If you were to 
read it, I presume you would find 
the greater part very dull, some 
parts of it quite absurd, and no part of it 
at all equal to the Bible ; it is not so inter- 
esting, nor so beautiful, and certainly not so 
true. And yet there are many people who 
hold it in as great reverence as we do the 
Bible. They do not care to have any other 
book, and oppose writing and printing any 
others, using this singular logic : " If they con- 
tradict anything in the Koran, they are not 



IIO THE GOOD, THE BETTER, THE BEST. 

true ; and if they say anything that is true that 
is not in the Koran, it is unimportant." Years 
ago I happened to read this saying of the 
Arabs : " Destroy not a piece of white paper, 
for a verse of the Koran might be written on 
it." And to this day I cannot readily bring 
myself to throw away the smallest bit of white 
paper ; for I say to myself, " Upon it might 
be written some inspiring truth, or some word 
of divine comfort or human love." A friend 
once told me that her father, though a man 
of wealth, could not endure to see even a 
crumb of bread wasted, because in early life 
he had been wrecked on the coast of Arabia, 
and had wandered in a starving condition over 
the hot desert for days, when a morsel of bread 
would have been more precious to him than 
all the wealth of his wrecked ship. So here, 
already in our sermon, we come across a two- 
fold lesson : Don't waste white paper, — you 
might write on it one of the Beatitudes of 
Christ ; don't waste a bit of bread, — it might 
feed some hungry child. Waste is a sort of 
selfishness; it is forgetfulness of the wants of 
others. 



THE GOOD, THE BETTER, THE BEST. I I I 

i. But we began to talk about the Koran. 
Yesterday I came across a saying of Mahomet, 
— I presume it is in the Koran, — " If I had but 
two loaves of bread, I would sell one and buy 
hyacinths, for they would feed my soul." Now, 
Mahomet said a very wise thing in this poet- 
ical remark ; it is very like what we ourselves 
are doing to-day in heaping up these flowers 
about us. You must not take it literally; he 
did not mean exactly that if a poor man had 
but two loaves of bread, — and Eastern loaves 
are not so large as ours, — he had better sell 
one and buy some flowers to smell and look 
at while he ate the other loaf. This might be 
very unwise, and leave him the next morning 
without a breakfast and with only faded and 
odorless hyacinths. Mahomet meant that it was 
not wise to spend all one's money and strength 
and time upon one's body. If I were speaking 
to older persons, I would say, the external life ; 
but to you I say the body, and I mean by that, 
dress, and nice things to eat and drink, and 
pleasure. I would not use everything I have to 
get these, but would use a part to get something 
that would do my mind and heart good. 



112 THE GOOD, THE BETTER, THE BEST. 

Now, I fear — indeed,.! know — that many 
young persons care for little except these three 
things ; and boys and girls are much alike in 
regard to them. As to dress they want the 
most 'and the finest they can get, and often 
without much regard to the ability of their 
parents to provide it. Father may wear rusty 
clothes and last year's hat and patched boots, 
and mother go clothed in plain and home-made 
garments and featherless bonnets ; but the 
boys and the girls must have the newest and 
the gayest and the finest of everything they 
can possibly command. Now, where there is 
occasion for economy, I think there is some- 
thing wrong when a boy dresses better than 
his father, or a daughter than her mother; but 
however this may be, it is a great mistake for 
young people to spend a large part of what 
they have to spend on their dress. It does not 
matter whether you earn your money yourself 
or it is allowed you, — when it all goes to dress 
and decorate the body, it is a great mistake. 
And the same is true about eating and drink- 
ing. I have not forgotten w T hat a young ap- 
petite is, nor how sweet is candy, nor how 



THE GOOD, THE BETTER, THE BEST. I 1 3 

refreshing are ices and soda in these hot days. 
I know what that generous feeling is that 
prompts one to treat friends, and that even 
keener joy of sharing your pleasure in these 
things with others. I do not condemn them ; 
but I say, do not use all, nor half, nor quarter of 
what you have, for such things and in these 
ways. Keep the large balance for something 
else that I shall tell you of presently. 

So, too, of pleasure generally. It seems to 
me the whole world, especially the young 
world, is running to pleasure. And I do not 
object to that, only I would have it pleasure of 
the right kind and got in the best way. I 
think we all ought to be very shy of costly 
pleasures, and we ought to spend but little 
money on our pleasures. I do not care how 
pure the pleasure may be, if it costs any con- 
siderable part of your money you must pass 
it by. One is on the road to all sorts of ruin 
who spends much for what we call pleasure ; 
it empties not only the purse, but the mind, 
and at last the heart, and finally turns the body 
into a jaded and worn-out thing. No ; if you 
have but two loaves of bread, sell one and buy 



114 THE GOOD, THE BETTER, THE BEST. 

hyacinths for your soulj if you have only so 
much money, use but a small part of it for 
dress, for nice things to eat and drink, for 
pleasure, and use the greater part for getting 
what will do your mind and heart good. 

But you ask : What exactly do you mean ? 
I mean, among other things, this : instead of 
getting the finest possible dress, or taking ex- 
pensive drives (a good tramp over the hills is 
better), or eating costly ices and endless con- 
fections, buy some good book, — a real, true 
book, well printed and bound, — and consider 
that you have sold bread and bought hya- 
cinths, — that you have got something that 
will feed your mind. Or buy a picture, — a 
good copy of some real work of art, — a St. 
Cecilia listening to the angelic choirs, or 
St. George beating down the dragon with the 
spear of truth. This will feed your soul with 
thoughts sweet as the odors of hyacinths, and 
strengthen your heart with the bread of beauty 
and of truth. 

I might mention other things ; but what I 
want to urge on you young people who are so 
beset by temptations to throw all your life and 



THE GOOD, THE Bl ITER, THE BEST, I I 5 

thought and resources into pleasure -^\ one 
sort and another, is this: have regard to your 
higher nature, spend for that; feed your mind 
with knowledge ; keep your heart well sup- 
plied with such things as are beautiful and 
sweet and divine. 

It was said of Wordsworth, — and I wish 
the young people here would put the phrase 
away in their minds as a kind of watchword, — 
it was said by Walter Scott, after a visit to 
Wordsworth, — that he found in his home 
11 plain living, but high thinking." You cannot 
have a better motto than this. Let the living 
go, — the manner and degree of it, — let that he 
as it justly may; but see to it that the thinking 
be high, — first pure, then earnest, dignified, 
serious, careful, and lofty in spirit and purpose. 
Shakspeare said nearly the same in one strong 
line, — 

" He plain, good son, and homely in thy drift/ 1 

2. I now go a step higher, and quote a sav- 
ing of a wiser man than Mahomet. Cyrus, the 
Persian, used to send his friends half-jars of 

wine, with the message that " Cyrus has not 



Il6 THE GOOD, THE BETTER, THE BEST. 

for some time tasted any sweeter, and therefore 
wishes you also to drink it." I think you will 
agree with me that this is more beautiful than 
the remark of Mahomet. One tells us to 
think of ourselves; the other leads us into 
sympathetic thought of others. To treat self 
in the highest fashion is a wise and important 
thing; but one may do this, and yet be very 
unlovely and hard. It may be but a sort of 
refined and exalted selfishness; but this habit 
and word of Cyrus goes half-way, at least, 
towards the very highest Christian truth ; it 
marks the point where natural feeling shades 
off into Christian principle. You know it is 
thought of Cyrus that he is one of those " out- 
side saints " who constitute a part of God's 
great family ; for God said of him, " I have 
called thee by thy name ; I have surnamed 
thee, though thou hast not known me." He 
was a great statesman and benefactor, and a 
friend of the Jewish nation ; he provided Ezra 
with money and men to go back to Jerusalem 
and rebuild the temple ; and he confessed that 
"the God of Israel, He is God." All these 
things showed his greatness and goodness ; but 



THE GOOD, THE BETTER, THE BEST. I I 7 

this habit of dividing his good things with his 
friends reveals a still finer side of his character. 

I think very highly of that quality and virtue 
that we call generosity ; but to have it perfect, 
it must be mixed with sympathy. Giving good 
things to others because you wish them to en- 
joy what you enjoy, — what is more beautiful? 
What purer human joy is there than to go out 
into an orchard on some fair day in late sum- 
mer and pluck a peach ripe, cool, and dewy 
with the breath of the morning, and, dividing 
it, give the better half to one you love best? 
or, in these June days, to gather a double- 
budded rose, — one for your friend and one 
for yourself? I think almost everything is to 
be hoped for one in the way of character who, 
when he enjoys a good thing, feels this strong 
and natural desire to share it with another. 

Now the lesson is this : Share your good 
things ; don't be mean ; don't get off by your- 
self and enjoy alone whatever good thing you 
may happen to have ; don't be satisfied with 
any pleasure that stops with yourself. If there 
is any fine thing to see or know, — a good 
book, a rainbow or a sunset, a basket of fruit, 



I l8 THE GOOD, THE BETTER, THE BEST. 

the sweets which the doctors tell us we had 
better not eat at all, — anything and every- 
thing that is good and can be shared, divide it, 
and give a part to some one else. There is a 
divine arithmetic by which what we thus divide 
is doubled to us, — half as much, but twice 
more ! 

3. I come now to words better than any 
spoken by Mahomet or Cyrus, and I do not 
know of any better ever uttered in this world : 
" Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how 
He himself said, It is more blessed to give than 
to receive." " Yes," let us all say; " dear Lord, 
we will remember thy words; they shall be 
bound up in our memories with these flowers, 
these glad hymns, this day of June beauty, this 
happy festival." 

It is a good thing, as Mahomet said, to buy 
hyacinths, — to feed the soul as well as the 
body ; it is a better thing to share our good 
things with others, as Cyrus did ; but it is far 
higher, and something quite different, simply 
to give without any sharing or any receiving in 
return. This is Christian ; this is divine. You 



THE GOOD, THE BETTER, THE BEST. II9 

need not forget the first, and you must not 
neglect the second; but think most of this. 

And so I have tried to lead you on from the 
Good to the Better, and then to the Best, — 
the Good for self alone, the Better for self 
and others, the Best for others without much 
thought of yourself. I do not expect that you 
will get as far as the last all at once ; but I want 
you to keep it in mind, and remember, as St. 
Paul tells us, that our dear Lord put it before 
us as the best way of living and acting, and 
therefore the happiest way. 



VOWS ASSUMED. 



Draw, Holy Ghost, thy sevenfold veil 

Between us and the fires of youth ; 
Breathe, Holy Ghost, thy freshening gale, 

Our fevered brow in age to soothe. 

And oft as sin and sorrow tire, 

The hallowed hour do Thou renew, 
When beckoned up the awful choir 

By pastoral hands, toward Thee we drew ; 

When trembling at the sacred rail 
We hid our eyes and held our breath, 

Felt Thee how strong, our hearts how frail, 
And longed to own Thee to the death. 

Forever on our souls be traced 

That blessing dear, that dovelike hand, 

A sheltering rock in Memory's waste, 
O'ershadowing all the weary land. 

Christiaji Year: "Confirmation." 



VII. 




VOWS ASSUMED. 1 

" The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, 
and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. 
Amenr 

2 Corinthians xiii. 14. 

HE day on which one publicly con- 
fesses Christ and enters his Church 
is a day equalled by only a few in 
the whole life. The day of birth, 
the day when home is left and the 
world entered alone, the day of marriage, the 
day of death, — it is with such days that this 
is to be reckoned. And yet, what you do to- 
day is very simple. You have come to this 
Church, where you have come for years, some 
of you since your earliest remembrance ; you 
sit in the presence of this table of our Lord ; 

1 This discourse is a Pastoral Address made to a large num- 
ber of young persons who entered into the Church in March, 
1883. 



124 VOWS ASSUMED. 



you rise to confess your faith in Christ, and to 
pledge yourselves to His service forever ; you 
enter into a covenant with this church to wor- 
ship with it, to unite your life with the lives 
of its members for common ends of Christian 
service and fellowship. You openly consecrate 
yourselves to the service of God ; you take 
Him, by your own act, as your God and Father, 
and put your life in accord with this relation ; 
you accept Christ as your Saviour and Guide 
and Friend, — as the Way you are to live, the 
Truth you are to know, the Life you are to 
become one with. This is all that you do 
to-day, — a very simple thing, and yet a very 
great thing. It is a simple thing for the sun 
to rise, 4 — it is merely the earth turning on its 
axis a little farther, — but how great the change ! 
Darkness gone and day come, the blindness of 
night past and the clearness of light about us. 
So this brief hour brings to you a change 
almost as great; and yet, in another sense, 
this act is no change. It does not change the 
nature of duty. You are under no obligation 
to do anything that you were not under before. 
If there was anything that was right and proper 



VOWS ASSUMED. I 25 



for you to do in the past, it is right and proper 
still. You are under no stricter rule now, than 
you have been. What would be sin now, was 
sin in the past ; what was right then, is right 
now. What it is right to do, what places it is 
right to visit, what companions it is right to 
have, what habits to foster, what language 
to use, what pleasures to indulge in, what 
books to read, what manner of life to live at 
home, what spirit to possess and to show, 
how to employ your time, how to spend your 
Sundays, what feeling you should cherish 
towards God, what service render to Christ, — 
all these have undergone no change. Duty 
never changes ; right is always right, and wrong 
is always wrong. 

And yet, in another sense, your relation to 
your duties — to right and wrong in conduct 
and feeling — is changed. You confess that 
duty is duty; you take sides with duty; you 
choose duty ; you pledge yourselves to it ; you 
declare that you love it and will forever seek to 
do it. 

There is another change. When we thus 
enter the Church, we define our duties ; the 



126 VOWS ASSUMED. 



act itself defines them. . There is a wide dif- 
ference between a general sense of duty such 
as we are trained up in, and a sharp, personal 
acceptance of duty in our own minds and wills 
and hearts. You who are now taking these 
vows of Christian living upon you, have all 
been trained in Christian ways. Unless I am 
mistaken, there is not one of you who has trod- 
den duty under foot, and deliberately followed 
evil ways. It is the main source of our hope 
and confidence in you that it is so, — that you 
have been reared in Christian homes and by 
Christian teachers, and have come into the 
Church from these homes and the Sunday- 
school, already impregnated with its spirit and 
accustomed to its methods. Still, it is neces- 
sary that our general sense of duty should be- 
come a definite and personal sense of it. Just 
as in the other departments of life, there is 
a time when we must take the teachings of 
the home and of the school and adopt them 
for our own by an act of the will, so is it 
here. You, to-day, put the seal of your ap- 
proval on your Christian education; you say, 
" I take upon myself and for myself all these 



VOWS ASSUMED. 12J 



duties in which I have been trained ; " you 
declare that in your deepest heart you embrace 
God's service as your highest joy and most 
abiding duty. You draw afresh, to-day, the line 
between right and wrong, — you draw it for 
yourselves, no longer taking it from your par- 
ents and teachers. And so you are to expect 
henceforth that right-doing will be a very clear 
and definite thing, and wrong-doing a very 
clear and definite thing. You have, in a sense, 
taken your character and destiny into your own 
hands. 

In another respect, also, is your position al- 
tered by what you do to-day. You come face to 
face with all that the Gospel means. I do not 
believe that one often realizes what the Gospel 
is, what Christ is, what humanity is, what duty 
is, what love and sympathy are, except through 
the Church ; it is a natural and a necessary re- 
lation for understanding Christian truth and 
facts. Just as one cannot fully understand the 
home except by living in it, by being a child 
and a brother or sister, so here, we must be 
in the Church to understand Christian truths 
and share in Christian joys and hopes. It is 



128 VOWS ASSUMED. 

through the Church that these truths and facts 
are brought out and made real ; when we are in 
the Church, we are near them, we feel them, we 
discover their reality ; or, in ordinary phrase, 
the Church is a means of grace. I wish to im- 
press this upon your minds and to make it very 
clear and real to you. You enter the Church, 
not simply because it is your duty to do so, nor 
yet merely as a means of doing good, for the 
Church is something more than a society for 
doing good, but because the Church is your 
true and natural place. God made us to be in 
the Church, and provided the Church because 
we need it. Hence, in ancient days, endearing 
names were given to it. It was called the 
" Lamb's Wife" and the " Mother of us all," its 
members are brethren, and thus the tenderness 
of these natural relations is thrown about our re- 
lation to the Church ; it is a mother to us, we are 
under her fostering care, we repose in her love, 
we are within the enclosure of her tender influ- 
ence. You, to-day, come fully into this relation. 
You will not at once feel all its power, nor 
reap all its benefits. You will awake to-morrow 
and see no great change ; you may be inclined 



VOWS ASSUMED. I 29 



to say, as days go on, that it has done you no 
good. But this is not the way to test the value 
of any natural relation. You are rather to as- 
sume that, being in the Church, you are where 
God would have you, — in your right place, just 
as you are in this world, — and so the good will 
be wrought out in you. It is by living on, year 
after year, in this relation, doing your duty, 
yielding yourself up to all the good influences 
and teachings of the Church, sharing its life, 
striving towards its high standards, dwelling 
steadily under the full light of what the Church 
means, — it is thus that you will reap the bene- 
fit of what you to-day do.^ You may not per- 
ceive, next month or next year, any great 
advantage ; but trust me when I assure you that 
after five or ten or twenty years you will be im- 
mensely better in every way for being in the 
Church. It will be an intellectual benefit to 
you. There is no educator like the pulpit and 
the study of themes suggested by the Church. 
It will steady you morally ; the relation itself 
will keep you from many temptations and will 
foster good habits. But more than this, it 
keeps you in close contact with the great 

9 



130 VOWS ASSUMED. 



spiritual and moral facts. of the Faith, — God, 
Christ, prayer, faith, love, patience, humility, 
service, truth, fidelity. You cannot live in con- 
tact with these facts and truths without being 
shaped by them. The power of eternity thus 
comes to invest you ; you learn what spiritual 
and eternal things are ; you come, at last, to 
have a faith that supports you ; you know God, 
you trust Him, you feel His presence, you lean 
on Him ; and when the great trials of life over- 
take you, you have a refuge and a hope. 

This is the advantage of being in a church. 
It is not gained at once ; it is not gained at 
all without due effort and co-operation ; but 
it is the end designed, and it is fitted to se- 
cure it. 

As I look into your faces, all turned to- 
wards the morning sun of life, all just come 
to a full sense of your personality and of your 
work in life, your future to be created, of noth- 
ing am I so sure as that you are, to-day, doing 
that which will tend more to make that future 
safe and happy and in every way successful, 
than any other possible thing you could do. 
I look forward into that future; and while I 



VOWS ASSUMED. I31 



cannot see it as exempt from fault and mistake 
and sin and trouble and calamity, I can see you 
contending with evil and calamity, and victo- 
rious over them ; I can see you virtuous, true, 
self-governed, strong for the right, useful, ten- 
der, humane, helpful, reverent, spiritual, Christ- 
like, — growing in these directions, always away 
from the evil and towards the good, and so 
passing on into your years, — evidently Gods 
children, and with the marks of your Master 
imprinted on you. May this be true of you 
all! 

Let me now add one or two words of more 
specific advice. 

1. Never doubt the wisdom of what you 
now do, if you are consciously honest in it. 
No matter what you do, where you drift, what 
becomes of your faith, what evil you may fall 
into, do not allow yourself to turn on the act 
of to-day with self-reproach. What you are 
doing is right and wise. It is a step taken 
towards God ; it is putting your hand in the 
hand of your Eternal Friend. There can be 
no mistake in such an act. If there shall be 



I32 VOWS ASSUMED. 



mistake, it will be in the undoing and denial 
of this present act. Whatever else you may 
be tempted to think and feel, think of to-day's 
work as unalterably and eternally right. 

2. Let me urge you to surround your lives 
with a good set of habits. The gross sins, the 
evil speech, the impure word, the low thought 
and act, the bad temper, the spirit of revenge, 
the isolating pride, — -all these you will avoid 
of course. But beyond these negative virtues, 
have positive Christian habits. Speak chari- 
tably of, and kindly to, all. Cultivate a helpful 
spirit. Strive to be always and everywhere 
useful. Crush out, if you happen to have it, 
any ingrained selfishness. Strive with daily 
effort and prayer and untiring energy after the 
Christ-like spirit of love and heavenly obe- 
dience. To help you in this, read and study 
the Bible constantly ; for thus only do we keep 
ourselves mindful of these things. Study spe- 
cially the Sermon on the Mount, the Gospel of 
St. John in its last chapters, — from the tenth 
onward, — the twelfth chapter of the Epistle to 
the Romans, the thirteenth of First Corinthians, 



VOWS ASSUMED. I 33 



the Epistles of St. James and St. John. And to 
such a habit of Bible-reading join the habit of 
prayer. The devout spirit will always be look- 
ing up to heaven; the true child of God is 
never unmindful of the Father ; still, we need 
for our best good the habit and form of prayer, 
— the bended knee, the spoken word, the closed 
door. 

3. Be scrupulous in your observance of. 
what are called religious duties. Observe the 
Sabbath as God's day, with spiritual calm and 
reverence, with a gladness that is more than 
earthly, with worship and fresh entrance into 
the realities of eternity. Have for yourselves 
stringent rules for attending Church ; guide 
yourselves by a law in this matter. You can 
make no greater mistake than to let the habit 
of Church-going become a matter of mere in- 
clination, — a fitful, uncertain thing determined 
by weather and caprice. Let nothing but duty 
keep you away from Church ; let duty take you 
there. 

It is also well to guide yourselves by some 
such rule as this : live close to the Church ; 



134 VOWS ASSUMED. 



attend its services, the weekly one for prayer 
and the Sunday-school ; take full part in all 
the work of the Church, — its charitable labors 
and contributions, its regular work and its 
special undertakings. I urge this for two rea- 
sons, — it helps the Church to do its work in 
the community and world, and it helps you in 
your own inner life. The work and influence 
of the Church is of unspeakable value, and, I 
believe, is increasingly so, standing as it does 
for whatever is pure and high and generous 
and true and good. I want you young people 
who are coming into it, to fall in with and lay 
hold of this work, and make its influence yet 
stronger and deeper ; for there is nothing that 
will so enlarge and strengthen and sweeten 
and ennoble your own life as to work in 
these ways. 

4. Finally, let me urge you to live near to 
God in Christ. This is beyond everything 
else, beyond external duty, or any coming and 
going, any doing or not doing. Live a spirit- 
ual life, — you know little as yet what these 
words mean, but you will come to know them. 



VOWS ASSUMED. I 35 



Strive to know God, to feel Him ; endure as 
seeing Him ; aspire to Him ; do not rest nor be 
content except as you have a sense of God. 
If you sin, return to Him with repentance. If 
you become engrossed in this world s work or 
pleasure, recall yourself to the thought of God. 
Pray to Him, commune with Him, love Him, 
serve Him. You came from Him, you will 
go to Him; live mindful of your source and 
destiny. This, surely, is wisdom. 

And then, make it an abiding purpose to 
come into oneness with Christ; this is to be the 
glad struggle of your whole life. Take Him 
for your guide; do as He says; live with Him; 
die to sin with Him; obey with Him; go up 
to God with Him; get into oneness with Him, 
and so know His peace and joy. You cannot 
realize this to-day, nor to-morrow; but after 
months and years you may realize it. You 
may not, to-day, feel that Christ is all, that 
God is the only reality ; but if you fill out the 
plan you here adopt, you will come at last, and 
perhaps soon, to know that Christ is indeed all, 
— all of duty and hope, — and to say of God, 
" Whom have I in heaven but Thee ? and 



I ^6 VOWS ASSUMED. 



there is none upon earth that I desire besides 
Thee." 

PRAYER. 

" O Lord God of infinite mercy, who hast sent Thy 
Holy Son into the world to redeem us from all evil, 
let my faith, I beseech Thee, be the parent of a good 
life, a strong shield to repel the fiery darts of the 
devil ; and grant that I may be supported by its 
strength in all temptations, and refreshed by its com- 
forts in all my sorrows, till from the imperfections of 
this life it may arrive at the consummation of an 
eternal and never-ceasing love ; through Jesus Christ. 
Amen." 



HOME AND CHARACTER. 



" If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, 
will he give him a stone ? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish 
give him a serpent? or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer 
him a scorpion?" 

" And He took them up in His arms, put His hands upon 
them, and blessed them." 

" Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they 
be discouraged." 

" No power is to be weakened, but only its opposite power 
strengthened." — Jean Paul. 

" Come, let us for our children live." 

Froebel. 



VIII. 
HOME AND CHARACTER. 

u As a bird that wander eth from her nest, so is a man that 
wander eth from his placed 

Proverbs xxvii. 8. 




HIS comparison reminds us of 
Wordsworth's lines " To the Sky- 
lark," — a bird that the Duke of 
Argyll thinks we ought to have 
introduced here instead of the 
English sparrow : — v 

" Type of the wise, who soar but never roam, 
True to the kindred points of heaven and home." 

This couplet seems to me not only the most 
beautiful in our language, but to be as true as 
it is apt and beautiful. The wise soar, but do 
not roam, — that is, they are definite and orderly 
in their lives and purposes ; heaven and home 
are kindred points, — they fill the same place 
in the heart of man ; the w 7 ise are true to each. 



I40 HOME AND CHARACTER. 

Wordsworth touches a yery deep truth when 
he says that they are kindred. We use one to 
intensify our representation of the other. We 
say that a home is heavenly, but we do not say 
so much as when we say that heaven is a home. 
The home is the starting-point in our illustra- 
tion ; we cannot describe heaven until we know 
what home is. 

We have hardly need to experience it, to 
know it. The instinct is so deep and assertive 
that we know it intuitively. It is wrought into 
the nature of almost every living thing. There 
is scarcely an animal or insect that has not its 
place where it returns at night or for rest. 
Certain birds and animals migrate, and some 
are so gregarious that they must constantly 
move in search of food ; but the vast majority 
have a lair, or nest, or covert, to which they 
come back for safety and sleep, and to meet their 
young or their mates. This great dominating 
instinct must yield a vast happiness. Abroad, 
there is fear and danger; but at home, only 
repose, and the brooding of young, and con- 
sciousness of safety. It is probably true that 
by far the greater part of the happiness of 



HOME AND CHARACTER. 141 

the animal creation is found in their homes. 
We thus see what a powerful instinct underlies 
this fact, or relation, that we call home. 

See, also, how the imagination has dealt with 
it. Whenever we would picture the highest 
felicity, either earthly or heavenly, we call 
it a home. Heaven is nothing else ; when 
named as an " eternal home," every heart re- 
sponds, and at its fullest. The home involves 
incomparably the strongest and most lasting 
elements of our nature. It lies alongside of, 
or rather is the environment and atmosphere 
of, our physical instincts, our human love, our 
moral character, our religion; all have their 
field and their ground'of existence in the home. 
Any conscious weakening of its sense marks a 
step in degradation. Its obliteration, if it ever 
occurs, indicates an utter collapse and extinction 
of character. Any drifting away from it in 
fact or feeling is significant of danger. Its 
indestructibility as an instinct — and it seems 
to be indestructible — is the main ground of 
hope yielded by nature. There is a story told 
of an old Norse viking, who, when a boy, had 
tended his father's goats upon the hills of 



I42 HOME AND CHARACTER. 

Norway. He became strong, sailed the seas, and 
robbed, and got great wealth, and finally built 
a palace on the Bosphorus, amidst flowers and 
soft scenes, where he lived till old age came 
on, when all about him faded out of sight and 
recollection, and the only sound he could hear 
was the kids bleating for him on the rocky hill- 
sides of Norway. It is related of the great 
President Nott, who died nearly a century old, 
that he sank into a literal second childhood, 
and was hushed to sleep by the same cradle- 
hymn his mother sang to him when an infant, 
and that visions of his early home and of his 
mother, who died when he was fifteen, floated 
constantly before him, and that he commended 
his soul for the last time to his Creator in 
the child's prayer, " Now I lay me down to 
sleep." Life circles round to the beginning. 
When the merchant has made a fortune and 
would rest, he goes back to his early home, 
buys the ancestral acres, listens to the brook 
that sang to him when a boy and to the patter 
of rain upon the self-same roof, talks of early 
days, of old companions, of parents whose love 
and toil he now fully measures, and' plans to 



HOME AND CHARACTER. 1 43 

mingle his dust with theirs. I am not sure 
what this revival of early memories signifies. 
The physiologists would say it shows merely that 
the earliest impressions are deepest — made 
when the mind is most plastic — and therefore 
last longest. But I do not think a physical ex- 
planation is the reason of a moral process or fact. 
The question remains, Why are we made in such 
a way that the earliest impressions are deepest 
and come out at the close of life, so that it is 
not uncommon for an old man to q;o out of 
existence full of the thoughts and feelings that 
played within him when a child, and with no 
other memories? It seems to indicate a domi- 
nance of the earliest impressions and principles, 
and that when life begins again in other worlds, 
it is under the lead of these first influences, — 
that thus life forever keeps the keynote first 
struck. If so, it is but adding the emphasis of 
eternity to that of time, as to the importance 
of early impressions. They dominate a man 
through life; perhaps they govern him through 
eternity. If they rise into the consciousness 
after years of subsidence, why should they not 
live on, surviving because they are the strongest? 



144 HOME AND CHARACTER. 

And so, to-day, I bring before you the famil- 
iar but never outworn theme of home influence. 
I begin with this proposition, — assuming its 
truth, — that the home commonly determines the 
character of the children. Blood, unaccounta- 
ble eccentricity, and external temptation mod- 
ify this influence, so that sometimes characters 
issue from homes at variance with its spirit, 
alien to it in temper and trait; but for the 
most part children wear and continue to carry 
the impress of the home. If you will watch 
and examine any young person carefully and 
thoroughly, you will find not only clear traces 
of lineage, but also of the spirit of the house- 
hold. It is hard to decide which is strongest. 
" Blood tells ; " but it hardly tells more than 
does the moral atmosphere of the home. Of 
course, blood and spirit usually agree, and make 
a common impression. If household influence 
is feeble, lineage makes its full natural impres- 
sion ; if it is strong, it is more apparent than 
that of lineage, and outmasters it; otherwise 
humanity could make no gain. 

But we cannot go back of ancestral influ- 
ences. If " the tiger lives on " in us, if we 



HOME AND CHARACTER. 1 45 

have inherited cruel or deceitful or weak quali- 
ties, we cannot help it, though we can bruise 
the heads of such serpents. Humanity has a 
progress upward ; it grows continually finer, — 
less of animal and more of man. Each genera- 
tion may pass on its life to the next, finer- 
grained, more spiritual and harmonious, than 
it received it. We have all of us seen a hard 
parentage coming under refined and Christian 
influences, and rearing a family gentle and fine. 
Nature is kindly to such a process, working 
with the eternal plan that evolves good out of 
ill, and leads on creation from the lower to the 
higher. Lineage we cannot alter; and so our 
main field of effort is the home as it already 
exists. How shall we order it so that it shall 
be best for those who are in it ? 

1. We should remember that the family is 
not only a divinely constituted institution, but 
should be also humanly constituted ; that is, it 
should be organized with distinct rules for a 
clear purpose, and imbued so far as may be 
with a w T ell-defined spirit. 

The home is often left to shape itself ; it has 

10 



I46 HOME AND CHARACTER. 

no law, no purpose, no spirit, but such as the 
hour dictates. The home comes about; it 
happens ; it is not built and framed and made 
an orderly thing, having an order because it 
exists for an end. The most imperative thing 
a family has to do is to organize itself into a 
home. If a set of men were thrown together 
for the first time upon an island, or in some 
remote ungoverned region, the first thing they 
would do would be to organize themselves un- 
der laws. They would hardly sleep before they 
would determine what they might and might 
not do, and what penalty would follow disobe- 
dience. A family requires organization quite as 
much, and for the same reason, namely, because 
it is a society existing for the common good. 
It must have its methods of securing this com- 
mon good of all its members, and these meth- 
ods are the laws of the household. They need 
not be made prominent, for in divine things 
laws are inwrought and hidden; but they must 
exist. You can no more have a true family 
without them than you can have a body with- 
out a skeleton. The bony framework docs not 
show in a fair, well-nourished body ; but it is 



HOME AND CHARACTER. 1 47 

under it, and makes it. The lives of children 
should be regulated by these requirements, and 
any infraction of them should be regarded seri- 
ously. There ought to be no peace nor rest in 
the household so long as a child is habitually 
disobedient. The first, last, and uppermost 
purpose of the family should be to see that its 
laws are obeyed by its members. There is no 
diviner thing in the universe than obedience, 
for that is righteousness. 

Herbert Spencer says that " the most impor- 
t^t attribute of man as a moral being is the 
faculty of self-control." It may not be quite 
correct to call that an attribute which is an 
achievement ; but what he means is true, for 
self-control is the main factor of character. 
" Not to be impulsive, not to be spurred 
hither and thither by each desire that in turn 
comes uppermost, but to be self-restrained, 
self-balanced, governed by the joint decision of 
the feelings in council assembled, before whom 
every action shall have been debated and calmly 
determined," — to bring a child to this is almost 
the largest function of the family, and it can 
be gained nowhere else. But the family itself 



I48 HOME AND CHARACTER. 

must, of course, be organized on this principle, 
and work on this method. 

2. Make such rules as are right in them- 
selves and best for the children. When I speak 
of rules, I do not mean that a code of regula- 
tions is to be kept before the household, and 
daily life turned into a drill ; — that should 
grow out of something very different; still 
there must be a wholesome consciousness of 
the laws. 

Some of the college presidents tell me that 
discipline is an easier thing in their colleges 
than it used to be, — the sense of honor, duty, 
and respect in the students, being higher, se- 
cures a truer collegiate life; but they have, 
nevertheless, a set of sound rules that are not 
only ready for use, but create an unfelt yet not 
unrealized atmosphere of authority. 

Two principles should enter into household 
laws ; they should be right in themselves, and 
they should be such as are best for the child. 
There are certain self-evident laws of the 
home : children must obey ; they must respect ; 
they must fall into the current of the house-life 



HOME AND CHARACTER. 149 

and thus secure its unity. We wonder at the 
strictness and severity of the Jewish code in 
this matter, — children who struck parents were 
to be put to death. The fearfulness of the 
penalty expressed the greatness of the offence. 
It sprang from no semi-barbarous superstition, 
nor was it a mere relic of the patriarchal sys- 
tem that combined the household and the civil 
government, but grew out of the profounder 
truth that the family stands for the divine or- 
der, — the father being as God to his household, 
and any resistance to him like a blow aimed 
at God himself. And this conception, though 
not this excessive rule, is in force still. Until 
the child can take in the great thought of God 
as a reigning father and mankind a family, the 
human parents and family fill their place.- The 
life and discipline of the family is preparatory 
to, and of the same nature with, that of the 
world. Man is never outside of the family ; 
when he outgrows one, he steps into another, 
and one paves the way to the other. Obedi- 
ence to the laws of home is only a step that 
precedes obedience to the nation and to God. 
If parents do not teach and enforce one, the 



I50 HOME AND CHARACTER. 

other will never follow. If your children do 
not obey your wise laws, if they do not respect 
your just wishes, if they do not trust your 
judgment and love, they will do none of these 
things to society and to God. You let your 
child disobey you, you suffer it to settle down 
into a steady disregard of your wishes ; but you 
are doing more, — you are passing it on to 
God, a disobedient and unmindful creature ; 
you are establishing it in the moral condition 
it will probably retain forever. You and I, 
who have reached adult years, understand very 
well that it is our chief business to obey the laws, 
civil, social, and moral. It is the great lesson 
of life, — to bring the lawlessness of the in- 
dividual will under the wise regulations of 
human society. Household obedience is not 
only a preparation for this, but an essential 
condition of it. If a child is not taught to 
obey, it is forever after bruising itself against 
the barriers of society, or throwing itself over 
them into perdition. Jean Paul profoundly 
says that " it is in childhood that the divine 
is born of the human." 

Parents should also make such special rules 



HOME AND CHARACTER. I 5 I 

for children as are best for them ; that is, make 
the child's good the standard of requirement. 
If you do not wholly approve what the child 
desires, it should not be allowed. It is a 
wretched state of things when two wills, two 
opinions, two sets of feelings, prevail in a house- 
hold. It is hardly less wretched when, for the 
sake of peace, parental wills and wishes are 
weakly yielded, and the child takes up the 
reins of government. There is but one ques- 
tion to be considered, and that should never 
be thrust aside, — What is for the child's good? 
If it is well for children to read only light fic- 
tion ; if it is for their good to dance half the 
night ; if it is well for them to spend their 
evenings outside of the home, in saloons, at 
young clubs, in surrounding country hotels, 
and in the chance company they encounter 
there, — give these things your sanction, but 
do not weakly evade the difficult question 
on the score that young people must have a 
good time, that they must do what their set 
does, that they must run some risks, that they 
must learn to take care of themselves, that 
they will outgrow their follies. Let it be one 



152 HOME AND CHARACTER. 

thing or the other, — full indorsement or full 
prohibition. For the worst element of house- 
hold life is a double standard of conduct ; it is 
moral chaos, it is parental abdication, it is the 
reversal of the relation between parent and 
child. 

A strong, wise will is the foundation of a 
good home. It should be clothed with infinite 
tenderness and cheer, it need not be intrusive, 
it seldom need come to the surface, it need not 
use words of threat or command, it will seldom 
if ever use the rod, it may allow a large and 
generous liberty; but it must exist. It is a 
common testimony that there is more respect 
and affection in children for stern, wise parents 
than for weak and indulgent ones. There is 
a world of wisdom in the remark of a wilful 
but generous child to her strong and wise 
mother : " Mamma, if you were not an angel, 
I believe I should be terribly enraged ; but 
now I must love you, and I am almost con- 
tent." 

John Foster said : " It is a wretched plan 
that does not maintain authority as a necessary 
and habitual thing, in so uniform a manner 



HOME AND CHARACTER. I 53 

that a child scarcely ever thinks of resistance 
any more than of thrusting its hand into the 
fire." And he adds that " acts of authority 
and correction should be done without bustle, 
in a short, calm, decisive manner." 

But while authority is the foundation of the 
home, as of the State, it is not the whole of 
it, and alone can do little. 

3. We should give time to our homes. It 
is one of the evil features of our American 
life that business is so ordered that little time 
is left for the household and for the church. 
The merchant, except in the large towns, keeps 
his store open from seven till nine o'clock ; the 
lawyer must always be in his office ; the physi- 
cian is subject to calls at all times ; our mill- 
people work ten hours ; our school-teachers 
are busy all day, and spend long evenings over 
endless examination papers and compositions, — 
the most wearying drudgery for eyes and brain 
imaginable ; and there is scarcely any other 
labor that does not require time beyond its 
regular hours. What time have we left for 
our homes and families ? Almost none ; and 



154 HOME AND CHARACTER. 

yet a true home is impossible without it. All 
I can say is, compass it if possible. When Dr. 
Guthrie, the great Scotch preacher, was called 
to Edinburgh, he resolved to spend his eve- 
nings with his family, and not in his study, as 
was customary with the other pastors of the 
city, — - a bit of common-sense for which he is 
more to be respected than for his superb elo- 
quence. Sir Thomas More, the great states- 
man, said that it was hard work, with his public 
duties, to find time for private study, because 
" I must talk with my wife, and chat with my 
children, and have somewhat to say to my ser- 
vants ; for all these things I reckon as a part 
of my business, except a man will resolve to 
be a stranger at home." 

If the truth were known, it would be found 
that the homes from which float out these 
social wrecks all about us are mere eating and 
sleeping places. No time is devoted to the 
nurture of family life. The father and mother 
do not sit down with the children for a social 
chat and a hearty laugh, or perchance a romp. 
Children do not go to ruin from homes where 
these things are habitual ; it is such things that 



HOME AND CHARACTER. I 55 

keep them from the associations that lead to 
ruin. 

4. Give your children an abundance of 
amusement, but, as far as possible, share it 
with them. They can hardly have too much if 
it is of the right sort, or too little if it is not. 
When it treads the borders of vice ; when it 
consists of mere excitement ; when it trenches 
upon hours due to sleep ; when it is a draught 
upon the nervous system, — better hard, un- 
broken toil, or sullen idleness, than such pleas- 
ure. But of fun, jollity, sport, there can hardly 
be too much. Alas, that any of us outgrow 
it ! And the worst of it is that we withhold it 
from our children in those ways and in that 
place where they should have the most of it, 
and drive them into the streets for it. I wish 
it were possible to get this matter fixed in the 
minds of parents upon rational principles. The 
happy life is one that begins in the atmosphere 
of constant, not occasional, enjoyment. The 
morning brings joy; the evening distils peace; 
every moment sends up the exhalation of joy. 
In a true, well-ordered home there is a con- 



156 HOME AND CHARACTER. 

stant pleasure. The simple exercise of the 
affections, — the loving and the being loved, — 
the mutual service and sympathy, bring to us 
about as much joy as we are capable of receiv- 
ing. It may be intensified by actual sports, by 
holidays, by occasional crowning experiences, 
like a journey, or some rare gift, or the tender 
gratification of some cherished scheme or de- 
sire of the child. Whatever is pure, whatever 
leaves no stain, whatever is natural and health- 
ful, give in the fullest measure ;* the divine 
bounty, that " giveth liberally and upbraideth 
not," is our pattern here. But it is a matter to 
be considered, — secured if it is lacking, and 
regulated if it is not wise, as food and dress are 
regulated. 

We do not often enough think of the far- 
reaching effect of a happy childhood. Scarcely 
any influence follows us up into maturity that 
is so strong and moulding as the recollection 
of such a childhood. It is not merely a de- 
light that the memory fondly broods over, but 
it is the chain — light as gossamer, but strong 
as adamant — that binds us to the virtue and 
innocence of those early days. There is no 



HOME AND CHARACTER. 1 57 

other stream that will bear on into manhood 
and womanhood the teachings of childhood 
and all the sacred powers of the home, but one 
that flows out of household happiness. I verily 
think it is the key of destiny. Make a child 
wisely, deeply, and continuously happy, and 
you have done the best thing for it possible. 
Trained and educated it needs to be ; but the 
memory of its early happiness will bind it to 
whatever of virtue and goodness and wisdom 
are in you and your teachings. But no teach- 
ing, no example, will preserve its power unless 
united to happy memories. Gloom and unhap- 
piness nullify and pervert all good influences 
with which they come in contact. Alas for 
the children that have no such memories, who 
hear but scolding and reproof and quarrelling ; 
whose caresses are blows, and whose lullabies 
are mingled with curses ! What wonder that 
a soft place cannot be found in their hearts for 
any seed of good, and that they grow up crimi- 
nals and profligates ? 

5. Have as good a home externally as you 
can provide. This is not saying, have a costly 



I58 HOME AND CHARACTER. 

home. The least necessary element in comfort 
and cheer is money. Something of this is 
needed ; but cleanliness, taste, observation, and 
a cheery spirit will do more. Costly furniture, 
soft carpets, broad mirrors, and light-hiding 
draperies have little to do with making a home 
attractive, and even with making it comfortable. 
There is nothing that furnishes so beautifully 
and wisely as books and pictures ; no light is 
so sweet as that reflected from flowers ; no car- 
pet is so beautiful as a cleanly floor ; no chairs 
are so adorning as those that are simply com- 
fortable. Parents often say, " If I were in 
better circumstances I would have a more at- 
tractive home for my friends ; " but it were bet- 
ter to dismiss the thought of friends, and think 
of making home so pleasant and cheery, so 
well furnished with books, so adorned with 
pictures, so sweetly home-like, in short, that it 
would seem to children the best place on earth. 
I once stood in the room at Marshfield used 
by the young children of Daniel Webster; its 
walls were literally covered with pictures, — not 
costly, but pleasing and instructive. The great 
man well knew what he was doing in thus 



HOME AND CHARACTER. I 59 

adorning the walls of his children's room. He 
himself drew the sweetest pleasures of his life 
from the memories of his early days ; they add 
an indescribable grace and pathos to the later 
years of his life, and he strove to pass on the 
heritage. 

6. Cultivate an intense oneness and intimacy 
in the family. There is some fearfully wrong 
influence at work in a household where there 
is distance and shyness between children and 
parents. It is a sad thing when a daughter has 
any confidant more trusted than her mother or 
— according to Mr. Ruskin — father, or a son 
than one or both of, his parents. Yet it is a 
condition very apt to come about unless a habit 
of intimacy • be cultivated. From the first, 
share in their thoughts and feelings, and in any 
sorrow 7 or anxiety have the readiest sympathy. 
Children have their griefs ; young persons their 
disappointments, their moods of unaccountable 
gloom ; they suffer far more than we who have 
learned to endure, and have attained to faith 
and " the philosophic calm," or perhaps have 
been dulled by years. The occasion of grief 



l6o HOME AND CHARACTER. 

is no measure of its greatness or reality. The 
child who comes to you in tears over a broken 
toy or a disappointed holiday is suffering more 
than your neighbor who has lost half his fortune, 
and is in more need of comfort and sympathy. 
Know what your boy is thinking about, what he 
talks of with his companions, what are his tastes 
and aversions, what books he reads, where he 
spends his time, what is the character of his 
associates. Unless you know these things, 
he will drift away, and come under stronger 
influences than yours. There is nothing so 
much to be dreaded in a child as a premature 
individualism. It is Gods plan that we should 
go through the world as families, — a phalanx 
of love firmly linked together, staying each 
other when we falter, and together breasting 
the storms of life. The dangerous period is 
that transitional one when we are " rounding 
into self," — the period between the family into 
which we were born to that formed by marriage. 
It is the stage of external individuality, 'and 
hence of moral weakness. To render it safe, 
it should be bridged by the influence of the 
first — sweet and intimate and tender — reach- 



HOME AND CHARACTER. l6l 



ing over to the second, in which responsibility 

and ne 

before. 



and new affections confirm all that has gone 



7. But, in order that family influence may be 
strongest, it must be deeply and directly Chris- 
tian. All that I have urged is indeed Christian, 
but no aggregate of good qualities fills out that 
word, — it implies also a specific thing. I have 
no faith in, nor hope of, any training that is 
not Christian. You have no holding ground 
till your anchor is dropped in the cleft of that 
rock. There is no seed that is surely vital but 
that of Christian truth. There is no soil 
pledged to yield a harvest but the conscience, 
sown with this seed, watered by prayer and by 
all that prayer means, and refreshed by heav- 
enly dews. There is no remembrance that so 
stays and grows as that of the teachings of 
Christian morality in the household ; it literally 
grows. Other influences weaken ; but this 
takes on more meaning, and becomes more 
and more rational and practical under the ex- 
perience of life, because it was shaped and di- 
rected under the teaching of love, and love 

11 



1 62 HOME AND CHARACTER. 

seldom mistakes. Its tenderness takes on an 
unspeakable, ever-growing pathos. It melts 
and subdues, and how often, at last, does it 
conquer and win ! 

Jean Paul, who has penetrated more deeply 
into the child nature than any other save Him 
who made it the type of His heavenly kingdom, 
says in his "Levana:" "The fruits of right 
[moral] training cannot be at once harvested, 
and you will often wonder that after doing so 
much, so much yet remains to be done ; but in 
after years the results of your labors will richly 
appear, for that which is planted must first 
germinate and break through its rude coverings 
before it can rise to rejoice in the sunlight and, 
in turn, bear fruit." The sudden and absolute 
conversion of great sinners, which is often 
called a miracle of grace, has usually been pre- 
ceded by a piously taught childhood, — a 
mothers love, mixed with divine love, brooded 
over the young heart, sang to it in sacred 
measures, taught it some words of simple 
prayer, held it to her own heart while it beat 
with yearning devotion, breathed into it a spirit 
of truth and reverence, and so sent it out into 



HOME AND CHARACTER. 1 63 

the stormy, overmastering world of temptation. 
Such seed never perishes, for it is eternal in its 
quality. When it comes to fruit, we call it a 
miracle of grace, and so it is ; but it is the gra- 
cious miracle of seed long buried, and bursting 
into growth when some convulsion has thrown 
it to the surface, where it feels the divine light 
and warmth. 

And not only is the religious feature of the 
home the most powerful and lasting, but it is the 
sw r eetest to remember. Talk with the New- 
England-born man in New York or Chicago of 
his boyhood, — he may be far enough from any 
religious feeling himself, but he will tell you in 
some confidential moment, with a pleased, half- 
reverent voice, that he was brought up to go 
to church, that his mother prayed by his bed- 
side, that he recollects his father's prayers more 
distinctly than anything else, — even to the 
very words and tones, how carefully he was re- 
quired to observe the Sabbath, and how strictly 
taught in all matters of religion, and how it 
seemed to be the main thing with the house- 
hold. A little hard and over strict it may have 



164 HOME AND CHARACTER. 

been ; but he will tell you that it was all wise 
and wholesome, and that whatever of good 
there is in him is due to such a training. 

There is no obligation due to posterity so im- 
perative as that of giving it a Christian train- 
ing, and there is no debt of gratitude so deeply 
felt — felt with tears and with ever-growing 
intensity — as that which follows such training. 
For all else passes away with the passing world, 
all else the moth and rust of time doth corrupt ; 
but this abides, — treasure laid up in the heaven 
of the spirit and in the heaven to which it con- 
ducts. When Luther s babe was brought to 
him by its nurse, his blessing was : " Go thy 
way and be good. Money I shall not bequeath 
thee; but I shall leave thee a rich God, who 
will not forsake thee." 

8. I say, in conclusion : Cherish the home 
with an infinite tenderness. You cannot love 
it too much, nor give it too much time and 
thought. Remember that life has nothing bet- 
ter to offer you ; it is the climax and crown of 
God's gifts. Make every day of life in it rich 
and sweet. It will not last long. See to it 



HOME AND CHARACTER. 1 65 

that you plant no seeds of bitter memory, that 
there be no neglect, no harshness, to haunt you 
in after years. Your little ones will die, and go 
hence with only your words and spirit planted 
in their eternal nature. Sons and daughters 
will go from you into the great world to live 
as you have taught them, — strong or weak 
according to the spirit you have engrafted 
upon them. How will you yearn for them, 
living or dead ! How sweet or how bitter will 
be the memory of the days when they prattled 
about you ! 



THE END. 



University Press : John Wilson & Son, Cambridge 



